This event is a collaboration between QMUL students and staff. Join us in this discussion and have your voice heard!

This 'long table' event is an open discussion to consider issues relating to BME student inequality and imagine ways of responding. It will give the BME student voice a platform to be heard and inform institutional change within QMUL.

QMUL is one of the most 'diverse' universities within the Russell Group. The university is proud of its multicultural community and aims to include everybody. Yet the learning experiences of black and minority undergraduate students attending the university are different to other students. Institutional policy and practice can negatively influence these experiences, such as by being based upon taken-for-granted assumptions regarding how to engage different students, and how to teach, support, and assess them.

The evening will include a Long Table discussion, refreshments and the first steps of drafting a manifesto. It will begin at 6pm and finish by 9pm.

Please note that this event will be audio recorded for the purposes of informing QMUL research activity and potential institutional changes aiming to improve BME student success. Your participation will be kept anonymous. If you have any queries regarding audio recording, please contact ers@qmul.ac.uk

What is a long table and what can be expected?

'The Long Table is a dinner party structured by etiquette, where conversation is the only course. The components are simple: the long table; chairs; a paper tablecloth; pens with which to make comments, to draw, or to scribble ideas. The final, and necessary, component is an etiquette sheet. This list of rules for engagement lays the groundwork for talk that is structured in its participatory aspect without being limited in content or access. The Long Table acknowledges the sometimes uncomfortable side of both private exchange and public engagement, while celebrating the potential for new forms of knowledge-making and -sharing.'*

As an audience, you can participate as much or as little as you would like. For you to participate you simply need to join the table and leave when you feel it's right to.

About the Hosts

This event is organised by QMUL students Dushant Patel and Nadia Hafedh in collaboration with Dr. Daniel Hartely from QMUL's Engagement, Retention and Success Team. With support from Dr Robbie Shilliam (School of Politics and International Relations), Dr. Elyssa Livergant (School of English and Drama) and QMUL Students' Union.

Dushant is a third year student from the School of English and Drama. He has found the long table format a useful way to express his experience as a BME student within QMUL. He would like to use the approach as a way of encouraging marginalized students to be heard.

Nadia is a third year student from the School of Politics and International Relations. Her study relates closely to the themes of the long table format, and in the future she'd lik to contribute to improving equality in society more generally.

Dr. Daniel Hartley is a postdoctoral research fellow from Engagement, Retention, Success. He is leading a research project that aims to improve the success and belonging of black and minority ethnic students attending QMUL. He has a specific interest around how the long table format can shift the boundaries and power relations of dialogue between people from contrasting backgrounds.

Dr. Elyssa Livergant is a lecturer in the School of English and Drama. She has been using the long table format as a way to encourage discussion in the 'Practices' module she teaches in Drama, an early encounter with which inspired the event you are attending.

Professor Robbie Shilliam is a lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations. He currently teaches the third year module 'Race and Racism' and writes and researches extensively around issues relating to race and colonialism.

Professor Lois Weaver is a lecturer in the School of English and Drama and formulated the original idea of the long table as a way to promote democratic and open discussion across different groups and individuals.

*The Long Table is an experimental open public forum designed by QMUL Drama’s Professor Lois Weaver to facilitate dialogue through the gathering together of people with common interests. For more information please see http://publicaddresssystems.org

Long Table: BME Success & Belonging in QMUL and Beyond