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Decolonising the Academy

Education Power and Social Change

Online event January 21st 4.00-5.30pm

Featuring Professor Kehinde Andrews, Birmingham City University and Dr Nadine El-Enany, Birkbeck, University of London

2020 was a momentous year, where anti-racist and decolonial activism came to the fore in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. However even as Colston’s statue was toppled and Donald Trump defeated, a senior Government minister has attacked Critical Race Theory and universities UK report states that UK higher education institutions are guilty of institutionalised racism. So how are higher education institutions going to move beyond mere paper pushing exercises and performative gestures to really address the legacies of empire and the contemporary practices that continue to have an adverse impact on global black and brown majority communities? What is the role of the role of education in bringing about academic and societal transformation in relation to the vexed issue of racial justice? And can the academic space be a site for change?

To answer these questions and to kick off Birkbeck’s decolonising the academy’s collective series we have invited two brilliant activist intellectuals who are the cutting edge of decolonial thought to get us started. Kehinde Andrews is Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University and author of the forthcoming The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World. (February 2021) he will be joined by Nadine El-Enany Reader in Law and author of (B)ordering Britain: Law, Race and Empire.