Hello there! I’m Pratham, a Student Fellow at BILT, leading on all things inclusive assessment. I am currently a final-year law student at the University of Bristol. I work as the Corporate & Student Comms Intern at the University, creating and coordinating digital and social student communications.
I volunteer my time as Charity Development Coordinator at GROW Mentoring, a charity working towards increasing social mobility and diversity within the legal profession. I also provide pro bono legal advice as a Student Advisor at the University Law Clinic. I used to be a bookseller, and while I have left that life behind, I am always willing to give you tailored book recommendations. I lived in Delhi before moving to Bristol, and now call both home.
Onto matters of more immediate concern to this blog – leading the inclusive assessment segment. I will be drawing upon my experiences as a Co-Leader of the Race Inclusion Advocates (RIA), where I collaborate, lead, and engage with a team of Global Majority students at the University to provide project-based consultations to our academic, professional, and pastoral service teams. The role has given me an insight into the pedagogical
and professional strata at the University of Bristol, and encouraged me to think about how the experience of a Global Majority student would fit into this bigger picture.
Higher education is undergoing a period of intense upheaval, with rapid developments and changes occurring at an unprecedented pace. Amid this shifting landscape, students can easily feel powerless and unheard. This is more so true for students from historically underrepresented and marginalised backgrounds, who feel particularly at odds with “traditional” academic models.
The overarching direction of my work as a Fellow will be heavily inspired by a conversation I had with a seminar tutor last year. In reflecting on our experiences as a student and as a staff member of color at the University, they encouraged me to view students as ‘junior academics’. Within the continuous process of decolonising higher education, such an approach would recenter the value added by students from a variety of different backgrounds and perspectives. Academia has always been about disruption, which is also intimately linked to the ideas of decolonisation processes. If assessments were tailored to think of students as new-age disruptors, hoping to further their fields, students will be able to draw upon their diverse backgrounds without any apprehension of having to sanitise the same from a colonial perspective. Follow this space to see where this train of thought leads me…
If you would like to discuss any of the above, or even better, get involved in the projects and research I am conducting this year, I am always open to collaborating (it’s all about co-creation after all). Feel free to reach out to me at pratham.gupta.2023@bristol.ac.uk or on LinkedIn!
