Session 3: Experience Decolonising across disciplines in postgraduate research and supervision (April 2023)

Davina Whitnall

Title: Do we need to deinstitutionalise first? Exploration of the issues and implications of decolonising knowledge for pedagogy

Summary: Decolonising pedagogical practice remains a challenge in Higher Education (HE) despite institutional and sectoral steps to improve and change practice. This discussion aims to question current practice, asking 'are we doing enough' and how to ensure the steps taken by institutions or the sector more generally are effective to challenge and change the HE environment. Using the idea that 'to decolonise we need to deinstitutionalise' will form the basis of the provocation. This idea is based on a sociocultural approach to teaching in increasing awareness of anti-racist pedagogy and policies (Adams et al., 2008). The focus is in 'Dismantling Structures of Domination' within the world we live and the systemic structure that exists in HE. Therefore, if we wish to decolonise, we must first deinstitutionalise, highlighting the need to examine the cultural patterns and organisational structures that maintain present-day racial inequalities (Salter et al., 2018). This perspective emphasises changing the 'structures of mind' in context that reflect and reproduce racial narratives. In the discussion, we invite examples of dismantling practice such as taking learning into real-world contexts, deinstitutionalisation as well as decolonisation, moving beyond approaches that merely scratch the surface of decolonising pedagogy and identifying critical impacts and practices.

Eleanor L. Anderson

Title: Indigenous Allyship and its role in decolonizing research.

Summary: Two-Eyed Seeing/ Etuaptmumk is a term coined by Mi'kmaw elder Albert Marshall to refer to seeing the strengths of Indigenous ways with one eye, and simultaneously seeing the strengths of Western ways with the other eye (Bartlett et all, 2012). The Two-Eyed Seeing expression has been used in research not only with Indigenous people, in policy and procedures related to wildlife health, medicine, education, and diverse other areas (Matthews, 2021). I am a settler researcher. To first explore an Indigenous principle, an understanding of the importance of decolonizing education, decolonizing research, traditional knowledge, and Indigenization is necessary. Indigenization is about infusing the academy with Indigenous knowledge and applying decolonial practices through research knowledge systems and institutions (Quinless, 2022). London Metropolitan University defines decolonizing as “…the withdrawal of political, military and governmental rule of a colonised land by its invaders. Decolonising education, however, is often understood as the process in which we rethink, reframe, and reconstruct the curricula and research that preserve the Europe-centred, colonial lens.” In Canada, the term invader, while accurate, has been replaced with the softer term of settler, and the violences of settler societies have rarely been studied in the context of tourism or leisure studies (Grimworld, 2021) Two-Eyed Seeing doesn’t seek tensions or differences or gaps between worldviews but instead examines a problem or an opportunity by seeking its strengths from multiple perspectives. (Bartlett, 2021) One of the gaps in tourism knowledge that this work will address is: what place does decolonization have in tourism theory?

Madhuri Kamtam

Title: Breaking Double-Fold Barriers: Navigating the Academic World as a Person of Color and Lower-Caste Individual from India in the UK

Summary: In this presentation, I will recount my personal experiences of navigating the academic world in the UK as a person of color and belonging to the lower-caste community from India. I will discuss the double-fold discrimination I faced, as someone from a marginalized community in India and a student of color in the UK. I will delve into the challenges I encountered, including limited access to resources, networking opportunities, and instances of microaggressions and discrimination, and how these barriers impacted my academic journey, mental health, and sense of belonging. Furthermore, I will explore the potential for decolonizing academic practices to create more inclusive and equitable environments that better serve individuals from marginalized communities. Through examples of decolonizing practices and interventions, I will highlight how these efforts can help bridge the gap between students from marginalized backgrounds and the academic world. Ultimately, my aim is to shed light on the ways in which institutional structures can perpetuate exclusionary and oppressive practices, particularly for those from marginalized communities. I emphasize the importance of recognizing and addressing these obstacles in creating a more just and equitable academic space that benefits all members of the academic community.

Tré Ventour-Griffiths

Title: High Societies of the Spectacle: Monument Culture and the Spectacularised Black British Past

Summary: In 2022, historical amnesia to the Crown's role in colonisation was evident when mainstream media celebrated the positives of the monarchy, while activists and others were silenced. However, this state mythmaking that applies to white colonisers may also apply to state-recognised Black historical figures, groups, and moments, including statues (BBC, 2016; Northampton Chronicle, 2018; Sky News, 2022), where Black acceptance is conditional (Gilroy, 1987; Hirsch, 2018). State co-options of Black British history is not progress, when white institutions then use the faces of some Black historical figures to validate some history as ‘good’. Figures including Walter Tull and Mary Seacole have become poster-people for the establishment, while for example, Black communities who resisted white terror campaigns in 1919 are viewed as unrespectable narratives. In this paper, using comic book metaphors I will discuss how mainstream Black British history has become “spectacularised” (DeBord, 1967) within notions of public monumentalism including public statues. Further, the unveiling of the Windrush monument in June 2022, shows the allure of a “good immigrant” narrative (Shukla, 2016), while the people themselves are still victim to the social harms of the hostile environment. Meanwhile, establishmentarians and ableist labour-contingent narratives and centred in dominant discourse (Osbourne and Vernon, 2020; Henry and Rider, 2021). This revisits how Black social mobility in Britain could be argued to be only possible by positioning oneself to the establishment, including colonial honours. There is another conversation of public monuments that must be had, which is not as simple as ‘good’ and ‘evil.’

Yanti Sastrawan

Title: Forming Future Indonesian Citizenship: Revealing Meaning-Making Practice and Partaking in Decolonisation of Media & Communications Research

Summary: The question of how we can decolonise media and communication research starts by partaking the challenge of how we can provoke canonic literature and exemplify its relevance. As social science researchers, we hold a powerful responsibility for how we aid knowledge production, maintain and confront research traditions, as well as unravel new meanings. My PhD research project looks into the digitalisation of education in Indonesia within the context of the national state ideology known as Pancasila or the Five Principles. It aims to examine the meaning-making practice of learning citizenship, particularly how learning is shaped through digital platforms and applications, as well as how Pancasila values are formed and then implemented in citizenship education. With the context of Pancasila, this study can be a theoretical and an empirical contribution to educational science on what good education means today, not only for expecting future citizens but also for what it means to be Indonesian. By pursuing this project with perspectives gained in Swedish educational sciences, studying Indonesian case studies can play an important role in why we need to empirically look at the educational landscape in other countries; not as a way to compare media and communications research in the education field, but to understand how theories travel and how it shapes notions of nationalism and social imaginary in other countries. By participating in this symposium, I aim to present the working chapter from my thesis on Decolonisation in Media and Communication Research, where I believe I can gain insight and suggestions on how to develop this chapter further.