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Decolonising the University

Decolonising the University

Edited by Gurminder K. Bhambra, Dalia Gebrial and Kerem Nişancıoğlu

Understanding and transforming the universities' colonial foundations.

In 2015, students at the University of Cape Town demanded the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, the imperialist, racist business magnate, from their campus. The battle cry '#RhodesMustFall' sparked an international movement calling for the decolonisation of the world's universities.

Today, as this movement grows, how will it radically transform the terms upon which universities exist? In this book, students, activists and scholars discuss the possibilities and the pitfalls of doing decolonial work in the home of the coloniser, in the heart of the establishment. Subverting curricula, enforcing diversity, and destroying old boundaries, this is a radical call for a new era of education.

Offering resources for students and academics to challenge and resist coloniality inside and outside the classroom, Decolonising the University provides the tools for radical pedagogical, disciplinary and institutional change.


This book is available to download through the Open Access programme.

Gurminder K. Bhambra is Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex. She is the author of Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination (Palgrave, 2007) and Connected Sociologies (Bloomsbury, 2014), and the co-editor of Decolonising the University (Pluto, 2018).

Dalia Gebrial is the editor of a special issue of the Historical Materialism journal on identity politics and co-editor of Decolonising the University (Pluto, 2017).

Kerem Nişancıoğlu is a Lecturer in International Relations at SOAS, University of London. He is the co-author of How the West Came to Rule (Pluto, 2015), and co-editor of Decolonising the University (Pluto, 2018). He also blogs at The Disorder of Things.

'A very well-researched and highly readable book that I feel compelled to highly recommend'

- Journal of Applied Learning & Teaching

'A fine collection of knowledgeable yet readable essays which address a host of vital issues for our times: Eurocentrism, whiteness, power, free speech, inclusion and exclusion, and public higher education... A must-read for anyone interested in enhancing a historical understanding of our present through a consideration of what it means to decolonise'

- Priyamvada Gopal, Reader in Anglophone and Related Literatures, University of Cambridge

'As Robbie Shilliam notes astutely in this timely volume, criticism of decolonising the university often overshadows the project itself. These collected reflections provide a much-needed analysis of the global movement to unsettle the Eurocentric white academy'

- Alana Lentin, Western Sydney University

1. Introduction: Decolonising the University? - Gurminder K. Bhambra, Dalia Gebrial and Kerem Nişancıoğlu
PART I - CONTEXTS: HISTORICAL AND DISCIPLINARY
2. Rhodes Must Fall: Oxford and Movements for Change - Dalia Gebrial
3. Race and the Neoliberal University: Lessons from the Public University - John Holmwood
4. Black/Academia - Robbie Shilliam
5. Decolonising Philosophy - Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Rafael Vizcaíno, Jasmine Wallace and Jeong Eun Annabel We
PART II - INSTITUTIONAL INITIATIVES
6. Asylum University: Re-situating Knowledge-exchange along Cross-border Positionalities - Kolar Aparna and Olivier Kramsch
7. Diversity or Decolonisation? Researching Diversity at the University of Amsterdam - Rosalba Icaza and Rolando Vázquez
8. The Challenge for Black Studies in the Neoliberal University - Kehinde Andrews
9. Open Initiatives for Decolonising the Curriculum - Pat Lockley
PART III - DECOLONIAL REFLECTIONS
10. Meschachakanis, a Coyote Narrative: Decolonising Higher Education - Shauneen Pete
11. Decolonising Education: A Pedagogic Intervention - Carol Azumah Dennis
12. Internationalisation and Interdisciplinarity: Sharing acrossBoundaries? - Angela Last
13. Understanding Eurocentrism as a Structural Problem of Undone Science - William Jamal Richardson
Notes on Contributors
Index

Published by Pluto Press in Aug 2018
Paperback ISBN: 9780745338200

135mm x 215mm

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