After happening upon the University’s news article about the School of Biological Sciences receiving the Gold Athena Swan award – and seeing the specific mention about their Decolonisation Report – I got in touch with its lead researchers, Dr. Dave Lawson and Dr. Celine Petitjean, to discuss the work in more detail. Our conversation started by discussing the project a little more but quickly zoned in on the Student Partners aspect and how this had been so crucial to its success.
The project initially took place with the aim to increase awareness around decolonisation in STEM subject, where there was a sense that it was not relevant to their subjects because they are ’objective’. There were three main aims for the project:
- Bring attention and awareness of decolonisation within the School and provide a space for students to discuss it and raise concerns.
- Explore areas in need of priority attention in the School including units, research areas, award gaps, recruitment goals, and building a robust methodology to monitor these areas.
- Participate in the global effort to decolonise curricula at different levels (School, Faculty, University, External)
All of these aims were achieved with the help of Student Partners. Funding for the Student Partners has been secured through three BILT Education Development Projects, each with a slightly different focus but with the same overarching aims. Additional funding was also secured through the School of Biological Sciences and Faculty of Health and Life Sciences (formally Faculty of Life Sciences). The project’s first year engaged five student Curriculum Developers who audited materials and collected student feedback, which fed into a school report and teaching resources, and was presented back to colleagues within the School with some implementing these findings into their teaching.
In each subsequent year, the project saw Student Partners working on different themes, including staff and student surveys and focus groups to explore opinions and understanding of decolonisation, the experience of POC and international students on our school courses and exploring the demographics of the researchers highlighted in course material.
The use of students as research partners in this project provides more genuine insights as the hierarchical power imbalance usually presented between academic/student relationships is removed.
The benefits of the project have been felt not only by Dave and Celine, but also the Student Partners, wider student community, colleagues across the school and other academics and colleagues in institutions around the UK whose have benefitted from the research outputs.
A major achievement of this project was the individual growth of the Student Partners who took part in the project. We discussed similar benefits to what we see in our BILT Student Fellows: confidence, ability to work independently, work in a professional environment, problem-solve with real autonomy; a way for students to explore their passion while also having set outcomes to achieve. One of the Student Partners who took part in three consecutive years of the project presented their findings at an international conference – a brilliant experience that truly achieved the aim of ‘participating in the global effort to decolonise curricula’.
Further to the positive impact for the Student Partners, we also discussed the difference in colleagues’ reaction to information when it is presented by students and informed by students and including genuine personal experiences of students on the programmes they are teaching – this can only be achieved through the co-partnership work done with Student Partners and similar projects. Dave and Celine believe that their work on decolonisation within the School would not have been anywhere near as successful if it had been done solely by themselves.
The Student Decolonisation Partners project is taking a break this year -both due to a lack of funding and workload commitments – as well as a feeling that a year of reflection may benefit the overall project – but we are hoping to see more from this project (and similar student partnership projects!) in the coming years.
A huge thanks to the Student Decolonisation Partners whose brilliant contributions made the project what it was, helping to promote equality, diversity and inclusion across the School (and beyond!). They were:
- Imogen Chakrabarti
- Adelaide Henderson
- Cecilia Orr
- Kamara Venner
- Makindye Ketley
- Sophia Saleki
- Keisha Santoso
- Jessie Yeung
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