Kent Law School Senior Lecturer Dr Suhraiya Jivraj has secured a £2.7k Teaching Enhancement Small Support Award (TESSA) for the Decolonising the Curriculum Project, a student-led university research project that aims to develop a manifesto focusing on education, inclusivity & identity.
The award of £2,758.30 is the second TESSA grant awarded to Dr Jivraj who is facilitating the project. She was awarded £3,000 in August 2018 shortly before the project’s official launch.
The project aims to gain an understanding of the extent to which BAME students feel included, represented or understood within the learning process. It will recommend improvements that can be made to enhance both the academic performance of students and their overall university experience.
Dr Jivraj said: ‘Students are increasingly demanding a “liberated curriculum” that represents their diversity, as we see from #liberatemydegree, “Why is My Curriculum White?” and movements such as the Kent Student Union campaign ‘Diversify My Curriculum’. Students studying law and politics at Kent have relished the opportunity both in workshops and through their assessment to explore both historical and contemporary issues that enable them to acquire “consciousness of their own position and struggle” in society and education.
‘The University’s Equality, Diversity & Inclusivity Project phase II strategy acknowledges this need in affirming that the “white curriculum acts as a barrier to inclusivity”, including because “it fails to legitimise contributions to knowledge from people of colour”. Phase II therefore seeks to ensure that “our curriculum reflects and addresses a range of perspectives” and asks how this can be operationalised specifically at Kent.’
Kent Law School modules such as Race, Religion and Law are already helping to create a more inclusive curriculum; students are required to engage with key works from critical race/religion and decolonial studies which offer alternative perspectives to those heteronormative and Euro-centric perspectives of white, able-bodied men dominating the Western canon.
Dr Jivraj says the Decolonising the Curriculum Project goes one significant step further by placing students of colour as well as knowledge produced by people of colour at the centre. She said: ‘Being a student-led project is crucial as it empowers students to become change actors and co-producers of knowledge, shaping the agenda and curriculum that seeks to include them.’
A student-led project conference – Decolonise UKC: Through the Kaleidoscope – will be held from 1pm – 6pm on Wednesday 20 March 2019 at Kent’s Canterbury campus. Students will launch the manifesto of recommendations that they have collated through student-led focus groups. More information about the free conference, including a link to register, is available on Eventbrite
For all the latest details about the project, follow @DecoloniseUKC on Twitter.
Dr Jivraj is also the co-ordinator of the Decolonising Sexualities Network and is co-editor of Decolonizing Sexualities: Transnational Perspectives, Critical Interventions with Dr Sandeep Bakshi and Dr Silvia Posocco (CounterPress, 2016) – a book which can be downloaded on a ‘pay what you can basis’.
Earlier this year, Dr Jivraj was awarded £2,726 from the SLSA Research Grants Scheme for her project ‘Embracing and Reflecting BME Diversity in Law School Curricula: Why and How?’ The money will facilitate the conduct and transcription of interviews with staff and students across six Law Schools.
