Race in Geography Teaching Workshop

Robbie Shilliam and Olivia U. Rutazibwa

The slogan 'Why is my curriculum white?' has swept across academia, fundamentally questioning the texts, modes of teaching and the structures through which disciplines are taught. This mood has also been picked up by the UCU and NUS whose reports have once again revealed a fundamentally different experience of BME students and staff. While BME students are overrepresented in higher education, they are more likely than white students to face low attainment, obstacles to career progression and feelings of alienation. BME academics, on the other hand, are underrepresented at universities, especially in senior positions, and are facing similar discrimination. Inevitably, this has impacts on teaching, for example, through the on-going lack of role-models and discussions that address exclusionary practices. As Robbie Shilliam put it in his blog post on Black Academia in Britain: ‘while academia has opened its doors, it has been unwilling or unable to dismantle the norms, networks, and practices that reproduce white, rich male privilege in the first place.’
In Geography too, there has been a growing debate around links between teaching and inequality. This has recently been summarised in Mona Domosh’s AAG column ‘Why is our Geography curriculum so white?’, in which she points to the obstacles to changing teaching practices and materials (stress, workload, added research), but also to the need to assist one another in building a new intellectual history and ways of teaching. When it comes to making a difference through teaching, she argues ‘I will be able to accomplish more with a less ‘white’ geography curriculum’. Joining the calls from BME colleagues and students, she asks for further debate and resource building. Such moves promise to enrich the discipline for everyone.
In this workshop, we would therefore like to bring this debate to the RGS-IBG and address teaching as a key practice of addressing racial inequality. 
The workshop will run from 1-5pm, but light lunch will be available from 12pm. There is also an opportunity to continue conversations at the RGS-IBG Annual Conference opening drinks from 6.15pm.
 
Session 1 Race in the Curriculum
The first part of the workshop will discuss examples that relate to teaching race, from curriculum diversification to teaching about race. This session seeks to explore how attention to race in the curriculum matters to both student experience and a greater intellectual understanding of geography. It will also raise issues around decolonisation, such as the potential tension/alliance between decolonisation and internationalisation, professional and personal risks/rewards and variations in diversification strategies. 
Confirmed speakers:
Kehinde Andrews (Birmingham City), William Ackah (Birkbeck), Angela Last (Glasgow/Global Social Theory), James Esson (Loughborough), Adam Elliott-Cooper (Warwick/Rhodes Must Fall) 
Session 2 Challenging Exclusionary Spaces
The second part of the workshop will address the experience of BME students and what can be done to affect change through teaching. The discussion will raise issues around belonging, well-being, retention and attainment, and focus on how these issues transcend the classroom into the everyday spaces of the university and personal tuition. As part of this, we would like to consider the spectrum that is encompassed by 'teaching' and the spaces it takes place in.
Confirmed speakers: Ezimma Chigbo (Birkbeck), Adaora Aligbe (Leicester), Savannah Sevenzo/Decolonise Sussex (Sussex), Margaret Byron (Leicester), Caroline Bressey (UCL) 
Format
The workshop is comprised of two back-to-back sessions at the RGS-IBG annual conference 2016 followed by an informal discussion round. It is is open to both faculty and students. Lunch and tea breaks included, as well as drinks at main conference reception. 
Image: detail from Ellen Gallagher, IGBT (2008)

Education Centre

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Race in Geography Teaching Workshop

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