How can Lecturers ensure that they create an inclusive environment where all students can thrive and enjoy an optimal sense of belonging? Why are some students less inclined to participate in in-class discussions than others? Are we doing enough to diversify the curriculum? Are we adopting a truly intersectional approach when we implement new teaching and assessment methods? Why is attendance not what it used to be?

UCL’s Arts & Humanities Faculty boasts a myriad of successful and effective EDI initiatives, yet these questions kept popping into my mind following meetings with personal tutees and candid conversations with students. Indeed, it was as part of the “Reverse Mentoring in SELCS” programme that my own student mentor first mentioned the issue of socio-economic equity, and our sessions brought to the forefront something that should be self-evident but that many of us hadn’t really paid attention to: that not all students arrive in UCL with the same financial, social and cultural capital. Whilst this is especially true for First-Year students, these differences are also pervasive in every degree year. Students who have attended private schools with lower student-to-teacher ratios, who have benefitted from private tutoring, who are well-travelled and who regularly attend cultural events are more likely to participate in class and to show higher levels of confidence. This is particularly pertinent in the Arts and Humanities, where in-class discussions often prompt students to share their personal experiences and preferences with regard to travels, performances or exhibitions.

A collage of our socio-economic equity interviews.I discussed this with my colleague Macarena Jiménez Naranjo, who had also taken part in the same reverse mentoring programme and who incidentally had received similar comments from her own student mentor. In fact, it became clear that so many of our students had discreetly hinted at the issue of socio-economic inequalities, and how these shaped their learning and campus experience. Furthermore, as an Access UCL personal tutor who has worked closely with this cohort for the past two years, students have often confided in me how in particular a lack of cultural capital exacerbates their impostor syndrome and limits their ability to perform inside and outside the classroom.

Macarena and I felt it was time to discuss the socio-economic dimension openly. We already worked together to produce an A&H EDI Dialogues podcast, an experience we really enjoyed. We therefore decided to host and record a series of three podcasts under the umbrella topic of socio-economic equity and education. Each podcast would involve the two of us as presenters and two students who would discuss a particular aspect of this overarching topic. We knew we wanted to create a safe environment where students could safely hone their speaking and analytical skills, boost their critical thinking and gain confidence. Also, in line with the decolonising the curriculum format, students should be responsible for designing the podcasts.

With the support of the Centre for Humanities Education, we invited six Arts and Humanities students to cover three main topics. Anna Duongova and Isaac Timberlake focused on intersectionality and reverse snobbery, highlighting how appearances can deceive. James Cooper and Victoria Wysocka discussed class issues on campus, including commuting and social opportunities. Natalie Calderon and Tatum Kemsley’s conversation centred around the Year Abroad, which, although no doubt exciting and enriching, can also pose a set of socio-economic issues.

The very stimulating conversations allowed students to provide insights and convey suggestions on how to make our lectures more inclusive in terms of socio-economic factors. It was also heartwarming to see how it built a greater understanding between all of us – people from different generations, origins and backgrounds. Above all, the students’ candid revelations and pertinent recommendations are already shaping our strategy – as Lecturers, as researchers and as personal tutees. We invite you to listen to the full series, which indeed challenges assumptions and calls for deeper thinking about the delivery of courses and institutional practices by bringing socio-economic issues on campus to the forefront. In the meantime, here are our top tips:

• Don’t judge a book by its cover. Reverse snobbery is real, and it is damaging. Living off campus and/or having to miss out on expensive social activities can also exacerbate students’ feelings of loneliness – encourage your students to attend free or low-cost activities.
• Commuting is expensive! It can also be exhausting. It can affect students’ attendance, performance, and in-class participation. The same applies to part-time jobs. Whenever possible, try to help make their workload more manageable.
• If your students have a Year Abroad, acknowledge that whilst this really is an exciting opportunity for all of them, the logistics can be challenging for students with caring responsibilities or those from lower economic backgrounds without financial support.

Interested in continuing the conversation or looking to collaborate with us on similar initiatives? Please contact us via m.oaknin@ucl.ac.uk and m.naranjo@ucl.ac.uk.

….

The UCL Centre for Humanities Education is funded by generous support from The Lord Randolph Quirk Endowment Fund at UCL. EDI Dialogues were made possible through the support of The Lord Randolph Quirk Endowment Fund.

Macarena Jiménez Naranjo, PhD, is a Lecturer (Teaching) in Spanish Language and Hispanic Literature at University College London. Her interests include Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language (ELE), language varieties, and curriculum decolonisation. She currently coordinates the Special Interest Group on Decolonising Spanish Language Teaching ELEUK (SIG-Des-ELEUK).

Mazal Oaknín is Associate Professor (Teaching) in Spanish Language and Literature and Gender Studies and Spanish Language Coordinator. Her publications include the monograph Feminism, Writing and the Media in Spain (Peter Lang, 2019), and the co-edited volumes Literatura política y política literaria en España: Del Desastre del 98 a Felipe VI (Peter Lang, 2015), and Inclusion, Diversity and Innovation in Translation Education (UCL Press, 2024). Her present research interests centre around EDI in Spanish language teaching and translation education.  Mazal is Co-Director of the e-Expert Seminar Series in Translation and Modern Language Teaching and is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Translation Studies. Since 2022 Mazal has also launched a number of EDI projects, including the “Tackling the BAME-BIPOC Awarding Gap in SELCS”, “Decolonising Gender Studies Through Reverse Mentoring”, “Reverse Mentoring in SELCS”, and “Mi Salud Mental: Using Curriculum-Infusion to Promote Positive Mental Health and Wellbeing”. Mazal is also a Co-Chair of UCL’s Gender Equality Steering Group.

The Centre for Humanities Education is pleased to announce the 2024-2025 call for small EDI grants within its Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) stream. We invite staff and students to propose projects that contribute to fostering inclusivity, diversity, and accessibility in education. For this round, we will accept all applications that centre on EDI; we particularly encourage initiatives that focus on (i) disability equity and (ii) race equity.  

Grants Purpose: The purpose of these small grants is to encourage innovative projects that aim to enhance equal opportunities and create a more inclusive learning environment at UCL Arts and Humanities. We especially welcome proposals that consider disability and race (and the intersections of these with other dimensions of equity (including socio-economic equity, gender equity, LGBTQ+ equity, race equity, religion and belief equity). 

 

Eligibility:  

• Faculty, staff, and students from UCL Arts and Humanities are eligible to apply. Students should apply in collaboration with a member of staff. 
• If you are a student, we suggest you discuss this with someone in your programme or study or department. If you don’t feel this is appropriate for your idea or are not quite sure whom to contact among staff, then you are also welcome to contact Dr Jesper Hansen (j.hansen@ucl.ac.uk). 
• Collaborative projects involving multiple stakeholders are encouraged.  
• Projects that take intersectionality into account are warmly welcome.  

Grants Amount: Grants of up to £500 will be awarded to successful proposals.  

What can these funds be used for?   

• Events/conferences/workshops;
• To pay PGTAs or other students to undertake tasks relating to an event/conference/activity (at the relevant standard UCL rate);   
• To pay the expenses of visitors (travel/overnight hotel if necessary) who give talks (note that UCL Expenses Policy will apply to these);   
• To purchase resources/consumables.   

What can they NOT be used for?   

• They cannot be used for staff buy out;   
• They cannot be used for the purchase of equipment.  

Project Categories: We welcome proposals in the following categories (but not limited to):  

• Development of educational resources that address Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion.
• Initiatives promoting mentorship and support for students from underrepresented backgrounds.
• Workshops, seminars, or events fostering awareness and dialogue on equity in education.  

Application Process: Interested applicants are invited to submit a proposal via this Microsoft Form, including the following details:  

• Project title and brief description (up to 300 words).
• Objectives and expected outcomes (up to 200 words).  
• Budget breakdown.  
• Timeline for project implementation.  
• Potential challenges and mitigation strategies (up to 200 words).  
• Relevance to the overarching goal of socio-economic equity and education (up to 200 words).  

Submission Deadline: The deadline for submitting proposals is 25th November, 2024. Late submissions will not be considered.  

Review Process: Proposals will be reviewed by a panel within the EDI stream of the Arts and Humanities Centre for Humanities Education, considering the alignment with the initiative’s goals, feasibility, and potential impact on socio-economic equity and education.  

Notification of Awards: Successful applicants will be notified by 2nd December. Funds will be disbursed upon approval of project plans. Funding has to be spent by May 30th, 2025 (please keep in mind that this is a hard deadline). 

Contact: For inquiries or further information, please contact Thomas Cryer (thomas.cryer.21@ucl.ac.uk).

How to Apply:  

Deadline: 25th November, 4pm.  

We look forward to receiving your innovative proposals that contribute to advancing equity and education within our community. 

Mazal Oaknin, Alejandro Bolanos-Garcia-Escribano, Haydn Kirnon and Marga Navarrete won the UCL Faculty of Arts & Humanities Education Award 2024 team award for enhancing belonging. This dynamic and tight-knit team has nurtured several projects in collaboration with SELCS staff and students to tackle major issues in higher education, such as the BAME awarding gap. Read on to learn more about their work!

Hi Mazal, Alejandro, Haydn and Marga – many congratulations on receiving the Faculty Education Award for enhancing belonging! Please tell us a bit more about yourselves and how you would describe yourselves as educators. 

We know each other very well as we’ve been co-teaching language and translation modules in SPLAS (Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies) since 2017. We worked hard to redesign the Spanish language programme that we had inherited, but what must be highlighted is that we are part of a very tight-knit team. Our personal lives – our personalities, ideas and beliefs – are very much entrenched within our professional lives, and we believe that our bond and cohesiveness can be felt in the way we teach and work.

From a pedagogical point of view, we have strived to align our teaching methods and materials to ensure progression across the three academic years of the BA in Spanish. As co-teachers of the compulsory modules on Spanish language in general, and pedagogical translation in particular, all undergraduate students of Spanish (as well as those who pursue postgraduate studies at SELCS/CMII) are taught by us at some point. This gives us an excellent opportunity to get to know our students closely, though it also allows us to identify challenges and discuss areas of improvement.

You’ve been working on a three-year project at SELCS titled “Turn on the heating! Tackling the BAME awarding gap by beating the ‘cold climate’ in our classrooms”. What a fantastic title! Can you tell us more about what inspired you to come together to work on this project? What did you observe about BAME/BIPOC students and the way that they encounter the educational system that inspired this project and its formulation?

In our teaching, we have also aimed at achieving best practices and we always endeavour to cater for our students’ needs. Our language groups are relatively small (12–15 students) and participation is highly important and strongly encouraged. Throughout the years we have become aware of the increasingly diverse racial profile of our students, and scholars such as Jason Arday, Kalwant Bhopal and Shirley Anne Tate have made it abundantly clear that the system fails to take into account the different needs of our students in terms of not only the curriculum but also student-staff rapport, pastoral care and teaching dynamics, among other key elements. This is something we had intuitively observed already and that has been validated by other scholars working on EDI-related topics in higher education.

In particular, the work of Shirley Anne Tate has been a source of inspiration to us. We were really empowered by her talk addressing the BAME awarding gap, in which she mentioned students’ “lack of sense of belonging” and the “cold climate” in higher education. Our research expertise lies beyond sociology, but as experienced educators these are issues that we had witnessed in SPLAS, so it became immediately clear that we had to do something to tackle them.

The project’s main goal is to reduce the awarding gap among BA students in Hispanic Studies through a series of multi-level initiatives over three years. You have done this through multiple initiatives, including electing BIPOC student reps. Can you tell us more about the process of working with students to identify and address ongoing issues? What are some challenges and possibilities that emerge from this relationship?

We worked very hard to submit competitive bids to fund our project. Our funding has been almost exclusively used to pay students for their work at a rate that would reflect the emotional labour that we believe is intrinsic to the role. We felt it was crucial to recognise their time and efforts.

In terms of the emerging possibilities, the relationships we have established with students have been transformative and deeply enriching, both personally and professionally. This project has led to many other student-teacher collaborations and to an increasing interest in pursuing PG studies among some student collaborators. Also, the lessons learnt are allowing us to fine-tune not only our materials but also our class dynamics, personal tutee meetings, research, etc. to make them more inclusive.

One ongoing challenge that we have identified is the possible reluctance of some students to identify publicly as BAME/BIPOC and so engage with the project by becoming BAME/BIPOC student representatives. There may be concerns that, in so doing, they become visible or set themselves apart from the rest of the student body in a way that, to them, may feel disadvantageous. Addressing this matter continues to be one of the aims of our ongoing research.

Motivation is key to the project, and it has been the impulse for all project members, staff and students alike. There have been administrative challenges throughout, which has been a considerable drawback. And, of course, there are significant time constraints, given that staff participation is a voluntary and non-remunerative task that has been taken on in addition to a packed teaching/research schedule.

Unfortunately, there have been administrative hurdles that have impacted negatively on the development of the project. Although this has meant having to axe or postpone some tasks and initiatives, the project has also made us more resilient. We have learnt to do more with less.

You have also organised termly workshops that bring together SELCS teaching staff and external experts on the awarding gap. Please tell us more about the topics you’ve discussed, and some of the more memorable discussions or repeated themes which have emerged from these workshops!

A few social events were organised by our student reps. We as project members supported these events.

Apart from the student-led events, we offered workshops and talks led by world-renowned scholars who work on EDI-related topics in higher education. We were grateful that the speakers were all very enthusiastic about our initiative. They recognised the need for a project of this calibre.

Of particular importance is the fact that some topics were commonly addressed by the speakers in their talks, including the need for greater awareness of intersectionality and some of the most pressing issues HEIs are currently experiencing, including (lack of) sense of belonging, the degree awarding gap, unconscious bias, etc. Many of our colleagues have found these workshops inspiring and useful.

A list of our events is below:

• “The degree awarding gap: What do we want? Elimination. When do we want it? Now.” (Angela Jackman, 14 May 2024)
• “How has Black Lives Matter affected racism in education?” (Kalwant Bhopal, 2 May 2024)
• “Speaking Truth to Power …. and other Cautionary Tales” (David Dibosa, 29 February 2024)
• “Against mastery: teaching and thinking in the neoliberal university” (Pavan Mano, 12 September 2023)
• “Advancing the Dialogue on the BAME Awarding Gap” (Jason Arday, 13 June 2023)
• “Making a SPLAS: Why I’m Still Talking to White People About Race” (Haydn Kirnon, 8 March 2023)
• “Creating an inclusive teaching environment” (Madeline Young, 2 November 2022)

Among the questionnaires that students filled in, we have observed positive reactions to our efforts.

Can you tell us more as well about the BAME student-staff support network that you have organised? How would you describe the community that has been grown within this network?

Our reverse mentoring programme has proved successful in subverting the traditional student-staff dynamics, thereby allowing for more authentic collaboration and relationships on an equal footing. Student mentors took the lead in setting up regular meetings with staff mentees, and these took place in neutral spaces outside campus, including cafés, galleries, museums, parks, etc. This contributed to students’ empowerment, boosted confidence and motivation, and a greater sense of belonging. The relationships formed will continue after this project as our aim is to keep providing professional and academic guidance.

We as project leads soon became aware of the need to get everyone together and share ideas and reflections on how things were going. Therefore, we organised monthly social lunches for mentors and mentees to meet and discuss their involvement and to build a greater sense of community. At the end of the project, we also invited all participants to join us for dinner.

We are particularly proud of our students, some of whom have already expressed their motivation to pursue further studies and continue collaborating with us. The mentor leads are currently working on materials such as a toolkit and a reverse mentoring guide under our supervision, which will turn into their first academic publication. This has sparked their interest in research, so we have encouraged them to go down this route and consider PhD studies.

As a group, can you also tell us a little bit about what you’ve learned from navigating these issues as a team, rather than as individuals?

We have learnt from each other by brainstorming and sharing common concerns. Given the nature of this project, we chose not to impose very rigid deadlines or milestones and instead opted to allow for further flexibility. The project evolved organically following our discussions with the students, and we took actions accordingly. We encouraged each pair to define their own objectives and tackle the issues that were more pressing to them.

We ensured that our project remained open to everyone, and it soon sparked interest among colleagues and students, so we were incredibly happy to welcome new collaborations that were motivated by everyone’s approachability and friendliness. By doing this, our project has become a safe space for everyone involved, of which we are particularly proud.

What are some of your observations about current translation and modern languages curricula? In what ways has your research informed your teaching, and vice-versa?

From the outset, we joined efforts to reconsider the materials that we used in class. Because our SPLAS Translation and language modules have a pedagogical function, we made a concerted and holistic effort to revamp not only the selection of authors, but also the topics discussed.

We discussed how this research has informed our teaching practice in a recent article published in language and translation journal Alfinge: https://journals.uco.es/alfinge/article/view/16370

What does belonging to a community mean to you?

Belonging to a community means embracing, celebrating, and learning from both our differences and the things we have in common. But we want to hear from the readers in the comments — what does belonging to a community mean to you?

by Dr Xiaofan Amy Li (SELCS-CMII)

After half-term, Felix* realised that the academic rhetoric required of essays at UCL was very different from what she had learned in her BA in China.

Using lengthier and more elaborate sentences is typical in Chinese academic writing. However, Felix learned that this is seen as undesirable or unnecessary in academic English writing, which prefers short, plain language.

People assume that MA students are already skilled in writing coursework assignments, but often forget that many MA students come from radically different linguistic and academic backgrounds and are still learning new English language skills during the MA programme.

This is particularly the case for the MA in Comparative Literature, which attracts a large number of Chinese overseas students each year.

To focus on this issue, Dr Xiaofan Amy Li (Programme Director in MA Comparative Literature and EDI Co-lead at SELCS-CMII) organised a series of Grammar and Proofreading Workshops in Term 1 2023-24 for students whose first language is not English and who have not written extensive academic pieces in English before arriving at UCL.

This project raised awareness about linguistic disparities among MA students. It also offered an extended learning opportunity to help students who are disadvantaged compared to students whose first language is English and who have already been trained in anglophone academic cultures.

Workshop sessions took the format of individual feedback sessions (lasting 30 min) between a tutor and the student, focusing on a short piece of writing that responded to a writing prompt. Two PhD students in Comparative Literature, Oli Eccles and Clara Ng, tutored the sessions and gave meticulous feedback to tutees.

Sophie* is an MA student in Comparative Literature who found the English-language requirements for her module overwhelming, especially since English was not her native language and she had never written entire essays in academic English before.

The feedback sessions in the workshop focused on the grammatical and stylistic details of writing, which helped her understand what argumentative writing in academic English required.

Jian, another student, told their personal tutor that they found it very difficult to keep up with readings from their Comparative Literature modules.

They needed to check dictionaries constantly, which considerably slowed down their reading speed, and often worked until 2 a.m. to finish the required reading before class.

Due to this, they did not feel confident about completing written assessments. However, they found the workshop feedback extremely useful as their workshop tutor worked very patiently with them on details of constructing phrases, clarity of expression, and maintaining a coherent focus in essay writing.

Felix — the student mentioned at the beginning of this blog post — often made self-deprecating statements about not being able to address a certain problem in the conclusion.

After discussing these issues with Dr Li and attending the workshops, Felix has a much-improved understanding of the writing style and format required at UCL. Writing shorter and more concise sentences has also helped her to avoid extensive run-ons and grammatical errors that typically arise from constructing longer clauses.

This project has highlighted that passing an English language qualification such as IELTS or TOEFL is not the best indicator of overseas non-anglophone students’ existing training and abilities for writing complex and argumentative essays, which is required for MA programmes at SELCS-CMII.

More attention should be paid to the varying linguistic, cultural, and academic cultures of our students, and to the most concrete aspects of writing such as how to formulate a clear phrase and avoid awkward passive tenses.

Overall, this workshop has proved very useful for MA Comparative Literature students, especially in Term 1 when students are still settling into their courses.

Many thanks again to the workshop tutors Oli and Clara for their dedication and work!

*Names cited here are not real names as students preferred to keep their comments anonymised.

It’s time for the crit. These are words that might send a nervous flutter through the students at the creative arts university Dr. Victoria Odeniyi works at.

A crit is meant to be an open, democratic, and non-hierarchical space where students receive constructive feedback on their artwork. However, for some students, their lived experience of the crit diverged quite a bit from its intended purpose.

Victoria Odeniyi gave a talk titled “Challenges and opportunities of embedding institutional research findings into practice” at Decolonising Language Studies II about her experiences as an applied linguist at University of the Arts London.

Working with the Decolonising Arts Institute, she conducted an ethnographic research project focused on ways of creating more equitable educational outcomes, partly through narrowing persistent funding gaps between home and international students as well as between students of colour and students who identify as white.

The goal was to challenge colonial and imperial legacies and to drive cultural, social, and institutional change by encouraging the institution to critically reflect on their current practices.

This post is the third part of a series where we summarise speakers’ main ideas about decolonising language studies from a series of symposia organised organised Dr Jelena Ćalić and Dr Eszter Tarsoly on behalf of PROLang.

Expectations versus reality: the crit as “un-safe” space

The crit is intended to be an open space for students to display their artwork – such as sculptures and other installations – to their peers and tutors.

Victoria shares her experience about a crit she attended at a location called Safehouse in Peckham, where, over two days, students showcased their work to visiting arts scholars.

She observed tutors commenting on a student’s work in front of about thirty of their peers:

 

 

As Victoria says:

“We can see that there’s a disconnect between these spaces of open, democratic, and supportive peer review, where the tutor […] holds back, and what actually happens during interactions. So this was one example of how I felt […] why some students may have found this space particularly challenging.”

Turning her attention to the space, Victoria also realised that there was no plumbing or places for people to sit. She remarks that, ironically, “the safe house… felt unsafe to me.” Students undergoing the crit “needed a certain amount of stamina” to spend two days in this space.

Assessing multilingual repertoires in students’ art practices

Victoria then shares a story about a design student named Angela, who is both Cantonese- and English- speaking and uses both languages in her work.

Angela experienced an element of frustration in needing to constantly explain her work to her tutor, whom she felt was resistant towards her artistic choices.

As Angela said:

“I had to keep explaining… there’s a lot of hand-holding in terms of explaining it to tutors so they will understand where I am coming from.”

Victoria remarks that multilingual students often have to bear the responsibility of explaining their choices even though they are otherwise encouraged to draw on multiple semiotic resources – texts, colours, fonts, and layouts – in their work.

This also raises issues around how students using multilingual practices for their art can be assessed, especially if tutors are not language specialists or do not have an interest in language:

“If the teacher doesn’t understand Cantonese, how can this work be assessed according to perhaps relatively abstract assessment criteria – which is used to assess other forms of communicative practices?”

Facing institutional resistance to recommendations presented in Victoria’s report

As part of her research report, Victoria suggested initiatives to support awareness raising activities around language, multilingualism, and named languages within the academy.

She also suggested that recognising students’ language backgrounds and repertoires would be a way of cutting across institutional categories and labels. As she says in the talk: “We no longer [have to] speak about international students and home students; we can talk about the repertoire of semiotic resources for meaning-making.”

These recommendations did not seem controversial to her, but when she completed and published the report, she was asked to pause dissemination.

Victoria acknowledges that part of decolonising the curriculum and university concerns navigating institutional spaces and practices like those described above. Noting that universities are often sites of struggle and inequity, she observed institutional resistance to suggested changes.

Some of the responses she received included:

• Competing priorities other than a focus on multilingual repertoires, such as sustainable fashion and climate change, were listed: “Not now, staff may become confused”
• The predominance of language ideologies and Anglonormativity: “if they choose to come here, they need to do it our way”; “it has to be in English”
• Questions of whether there would be a “safeguarding issue” if students are using a number of different languages
• Concerns around assessment: “How can we assess multilingual practices?”

Victoria also notes that her position as a linguist (instead of an artist) rendered her an outsider.

She was often asked, “but Victoria, what is your practice? […] [which] implies: ‘you’re not one of us, so please explain what you’re doing here.’”

Victoria’s talk reflects on both the challenges and possibilities of turning the decolonial gaze back on to the university; on students’ frustrations and experience; and on how difficult it might be to actually enact institutional change.

You can watch her full talk here.

You can also read earlier posts in this blog series:

• Let’s re-centre multilingual communities in our classrooms and research: a summary of Prof. Li Wei’s talk
• How students learn German through charity shop raids: a summary of Prof. Alison Phipps’s talk

This symposium was organised by Dr Jelena Ćalić and Dr Eszter Tarsoly on behalf of the PROLang (Policy, Research and Outreach for Language-based area studies) Research Group in collaboration with UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, with the support of CHE’s Education Enhancement Grant. This post was written by Kellynn Wee.

Classrooms are a place for learning, not for play. Teachers teach; students learn.

Actually, Professor Alison Phipps disagrees.

Alison gave an impassioned talk titled “Decolonising Multilingualism: Opacity; Justice; Joy” at Decolonising Language Studies Symposium II—a forum where scholars from a range of disciplines discuss how to decolonise the curriculum in language studies and beyond.

This post is the second part of a series where we summarise speakers’ main ideas from the symposium, which was organised by Dr Jelena Ćalić and Dr Eszter Tarsoly on behalf of PROLang.

Alison, who is Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies at the University of Glasgow, focused on how learning new languages can be an opportunity for expressions of joy and vulnerability – if classrooms and research settings were rethought to support such emotions.

Put on a show in a new language  

On a course Alison once taught on German popular culture, she told the students that they would have to put on a play at the end of the course in German.

Students, whether studying Marx or feminist theory, eagerly prepared for the final performance through learning how to embody characters from German novels and films.

The pleasure of embodying a character and of coming together to create something was not just highly motivating, but also “great fun.” As Alison tells the story:

“They would raid all the charity shops… and they would dress up, and then they would come and perform. What I discovered they were doing through performing in the language, with the theoretical concepts, dressing up, wearing the lipstick, putting the hair up, all that adrenaline — it meant that they were taking it really seriously, they were wrapping it around, they were clothing their studies.

They were caring for [their studies] in a way that we rarely ask our students to care for their studies… It was a much wider human sense of the work.”

The students did so well that the external examiner suggested that some research should be conducted into the reasons behind their grades. In their oral exams, students talked excitedly about how much fun it was to perform and how regular rehearsal helped to structure their language learning through repetition. Some would even launch into snippets of their performances. Alison sums the experience up as follows:

“It was participatory. The whole class shared it. They really felt it was their work overall.”

Make a fool of yourself  

Another one of Alison’s stories described her volunteer work at a detention centre, where she was recruited to help translate for people housed for deportation.

To her dismay, she realised that “though I was a professor of languages… my languages were useless.” She was “way too fluent in too many colonial languages and European languages… and here I was, sitting in front of people who spoke Pashtu, who spoke Arabic…”

Instead of translating or teaching, Alison found herself becoming a student instead:

“The young guys would teach me to speak their languages and they would be helpless with laughter, because here is a professor of languages who didn’t even know their language existed, and in that moment, there was an equalising… The dignity of language was restored to a group of people utterly stripped of their dignity, and they were laughing at me. I was the learner, and I was stumbling.”

Alison says that part of the work of decolonisation is to “centre the understanding and knowledges of the communities that you are with, and this is a fundamental decolonising move.”

She adds:

“All the things I’d learned about ethnography, and language learning, and performance… is that all of them require you to make a fool of yourself. All of them require you to know nothing. All of them require you to make many, many, many mistakes. A central concept in ethnography is naïveté, the ethnographic naivety: you do not know, you are not an expert, you decentre yourself.

It’s a move that’s vital to interculturality. We are required to decentre ourselves in any intercultural framework to be able to understand from the perspective of others, and so I realised that this decentring might also be useful in the [detention] centre.”

Recognise that language is a gift

Alison recounts other stories, working in places like Ghana or the Gaza Strip where she felt — through experiences of incompetence and inarticulation — how we rely on others to speak for us, or to teach us how to speak.

She says that part of the work of decolonising the curriculum is:

“The attempt by one human being to have a go, to render themselves vulnerable, to laugh at themselves and be laughed at, to stumble through that pronunciation and to be in a place where a new set of relationships might be made and made collectively…

Because there isn’t a word I speak that I haven’t been given by other people, and if I expand that to the context of language learning and language education, then that, my friends, is how I believe we […] find what might be found when we improvise and make things together.”

Alison rounds up her talk by speaking about how she wants to create spaces that are “responsive to dignity, that are fun, and that will allow us collectively to hold that bowl of tears in ways which are safe and ethical and expand a space for joy.”

Alison’s talk was followed by Victoria Odeniyi’s reflections on the challenges and opportunities of embedding research findings into institutional practice: how a university might say things like, “not now, the staff might become confused”, or “this doesn’t align with university policy and standards”, and how we might react to that in turn.

Want to read about Victoria’s presentation? Keep an eye out for the third part of our blog post series, featuring summaries of speakers’ key points, by subscribing to our blog (link on the right) or following us on Twitter.

Watch Alison Phipps’s full talk here.

You can also read an earlier post in the blog series here:

• Let’s re-centre multilingual communities in our classrooms and research: a summary of Prof. Li Wei’s talk

This symposium was organised by Dr Jelena Ćalić and Dr Eszter Tarsoly on behalf of the PROLang (Policy, Research and Outreach for Language-based area studies) Research Group in collaboration with UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, with the support of CHE’s Education Enhancement Grant. This post was written by Kellynn Wee.

How can we decolonise the curriculum in higher education?

As educators, we often hear this call – and many of us rise to respond to it as a crucial part of our research and practice. Yet spaces where we can share our experience and practices with each other are rare, especially across disciplines.

On 25 October 2023, a symposium on Decolonising Language Studies, organised by Dr Jelena Ćalić and Dr Eszter Tarsoly on behalf of PROLang, sought to address this gap by inviting a prominent group of researchers with diverse disciplinary backgrounds, including linguistics, cultural studies, social sciences and politics, to respond to questions such as:

• How can we bring the study of minoritised groups, linguistic citizenship and transcultural becoming to the fore in language education?
• How can participatory initiatives translate into policy and be better embedded into institutional settings?
• How committed are institutions and researchers to progressive agendas, both in our research scope and our methodology?
• How can we better include community members as co-authors and fellow researchers in our work?

In this blog post series showcasing the symposium’s key takeaways, here’s our summary of Professor Li Wei’s take on the topic.

Prof. Li Wei is the Director and Dean of the Institute of Education (UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society), and he gave a talk that focused on how sociolinguistists and applied linguists can engage in decolonising the curriculum.

Centring participatory practices

Li Wei argues that the social responsibilities of linguists should include not only the analysis of linguistic structures but also the pursuit of social justice through investigating and understanding the interplay of language practices and the social worlds of speakers. As he puts it:

“We are observing participants trying to make sense of their world in a real-life situation. By trying to make sense of them trying to make sense of their lives, we are participating in their social world as well. That is quite an important point: their social world becomes part of ours, and ours becomes part of theirs.”

By simply embarking on a research project, researchers have an influence on (and a responsibility for) the people with whom they work. The process of research should not objectify the communities we study—and researchers should not position themselves at a distance.

This is particularly salient in an era of mobility and superdiversity: as Li Wei puts it, “We see our responsibility as participating in a social debate over the value of multilingualism and over the consequences of a community coming together.”

Acknowledging subjectivity in knowledge production 

Researchers should revisit the tenet that analysis must be objective, contained, and distant. Analysis is not a mere presentation of objective facts existing “out there”. As Li Wei says:

“We are presenting our analysis of what we have observed, which is necessarily subjective, because we all come into our analyses from our own trajectories and backgrounds and ideologies — and we should not be afraid to say that this is my own understanding, this is my interpretation, and to open it up to challenges as well.”

Instead, researchers should be open and explicit about their socio-cultural, political, ideological stance when they present their interpretation and analysis, and, as Li Wei suggests, “invite the reader to participate in our analysis as a social act.”

Rethinking multilingualism as a strength

Can we move beyond merely ‘allowing’ different languages to be used in the classroom?

Li Wei suggests that we should think of different languages not just as additive, but as constitutive, in a shift towards a translanguaging stance:

“The stance we want to move towards is a perspective that views multilingual language learners’ linguistic practices and their racial/ethnic identities together. It’s all integrated, together with the sociolinguistic realities of the community and the educational demands of the school.”

When we label a group of speakers’ practices as “foreign” or “second language” or having “English as an additional language”, it has serious educational consequences in schools, as these names and categories carry specific socio-political connotations beyond simple linguistic labels.

Through approaching teaching as co-learning, we can reset power relations within the classroom and challenge dominant language ideologies.

Additionally, students learn in many different languages beyond the classroom. Li Wei says:

“We tend not to pay any attention to the source of the information they get, or what language they are actually doing the learning in outside the lecture theatre. How can we incorporate that knowledge that is gained through different languages and different cultural contexts into the teaching and learning in the university?”

Li Wei’s talk was followed by Alison Phipps’s presentation on outside-of-the-box learning practices such as how students can get good marks through raiding charity shops, why researchers should make fools of themselves, and how to hold a bowl of tears.

If you’re intrigued, keep an eye out for the second part of our blog post series, featuring summaries of speakers’ key points, by subscribing to our blog (link on the right!) or follow us on Twitter.

Want to listen to Prof. Li Wei’s full talk, titled “Participatory Linguistics in the Translanguaging Framework: Towards decolonising linguistics and language education”? Click here to check it out.

This symposium was organised by Dr Jelena Ćalić and Dr Eszter Tarsoly on behalf of the PROLang (Policy, Research and Outreach for Language-based area studies) Research Group in collaboration with UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, with the support of CHE’s Education Enhancement Grant. This post was written by Kellynn Wee.

We are pleased to announce a call for small EDI grants within our Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) stream. We invite staff and students to propose projects that contribute to fostering inclusivity, diversity, and accessibility in education. For this round, the theme is socio-economic equity and education.

The purpose of these small grants is to encourage innovative projects that address socio-economic disparities in education, aiming to enhance equal opportunities and create a more inclusive learning environment at UCL Arts and Humanities. We especially welcome proposals that consider the intersection of socio-economic equity with further dimensions of equity (including disability equity, gender equity, LGBTQ+ equity, race equity, religion and belief equity).

Grants of up to £500 will be awarded to successful proposals.

Click here to read the full call for applications. 

Please click here to access the short online form to submit your application.

The deadline for submitting proposals is 26 February 2024, 4 pm. Late submissions will not be considered.

by Dr Wendy Sims-Schouten (UCL Arts and Sciences)

How can resistance, defiance and compliance equate to resilience?

Resilience, defined as “positive adaptation despite adversity”, has become a popular term in education, research and practice, centralising the role of ‘positive emotions’, ‘successful traits’, and coping mechanisms in adapting to life despite great odds. Moreover, the phenomenon of resilience has been adopted in everyday language with a focus on ‘making people more resilient’ or the ‘need’ to become more resilient.

Yet ‘resilience’ has also provoked scepticism, and at present there is little consensus on the referent of the term, standards for its application or agreement on its role in explanations, models and theories.

Some of this is linked to the fact that key terms, such as ‘success’ and ‘positive adaptations’ are not clearly defined, other than being measured in terms of education success, an ‘ability to achieve goals’ and having a ‘positive attitude’, to name a few.

Revisiting resilience through lived experiences

To fully reflect on these questions, on Wednesday the 13^th of December 2023 the Arts and Sciences department hosted the launch of the Eclectic Resilience Hub.

Located at the intersection of the arts, humanities and sciences the aim of the Eclectic Resilience Hub is to provide a new lens through which to view human resilience and wellbeing, through coproduction with students, staff and the wider community, centralising personal experiences.

Here, ‘eclectic resilience’ reflects the dynamic complexity of human resilience, including defiance, resistance and compliance as resilient acts putting coproduction and ‘counter’ voices of members from a range of communities at the centre.

With the Eclectic Resilience hub, we will develop a base and repository for current and future education, teaching and research projects around wellbeing and resilience.

The event saw an exciting programme of guest speakers, including Donald Campbell founder of The Forgotten Generations, reflecting on voices and historical facts of information and achievements made by African and Caribbean people, Nicole Brown (IoE) who talked about Ableism in Academia, Ranjita Dhital, Clare Lewis and Francois Sicard (Arts and Sciences) who presented internal and global projects on wellbeing and inclusive practice, and an Alumni Talkshow.

Defiance and resistance as acts of resilience

Wendy Sims-Schouten (Associate Professor and Deputy Director Arts & Sciences) and Sara Wingate-Gray (lecturer and pathway lead for the Cultures Pathway, Arts & Sciences department) opened the event, giving examples of historic and contemporary voices of resistance and defiance, where instead of being praised for being resilient the person is blamed for behaving ‘improperly’.

A quote was provided from an interview with a member from a minority community who was accused of being aggressive for confronting people who used the ‘N-word’:

“There was another black lady, her son had been taunted and called the N-word, and she kicked off at the school, and they told her that they will call the police to get her arrested.”

The first speaker, Donald Campbell, founder of the Forgotten Generations, discussed his experiences upon arrival in the UK, as part of the Windrush generation “we were not liked by everyone because of the colour of our skin.”

Sharing oral and written stories of the early and later years of individuals from British African & Caribbean Countries and former children’s experiences of their years of separation from parents due to emigration, colonisation, repatriation, Donald Campbell provided a powerful narrative of resilience, challenge and survival.

The invisibility of disability 

Nicole Brown (Associate Professor, Institute of Education) followed with a powerful account of ‘ableism in academia’. Asking questions, such as “from your own experiences and/or your observations of others’ experiences, what is it like to be disabled/chronically ill/neurodivergent in higher education?” Nicole highlighted how:

“Invisible disability in the academy is exhausting, peers & work conditions constantly overlook my needs. They have difficulty grasping fluctuations & often it’s easier to just shrug off my needs.”

Innovative methods: Participatory methods, pizza pathways and measuring well-being

The next speaker Ranjita Dhital (Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Health Studies, Arts & Sciences Department), took the notion of ‘eclectic resilience’ to a global level, providing insight in participatory methods and eclectic inclusive practices in Nepal.

Clare Lewis (lecturer and pathway lead for the Societies Pathway, Arts & Sciences Department) and former BASc student Ambreen Shaikh took the conversation back to the department of Arts and Sciences, showing how effective eclectic personal tutoring practices are a two-way relationship putting inclusive practice and wellbeing at the centre.

Sharing information about inclusive coffee mornings for students and ‘pizza pathways’, Clare highlighted the multiple benefits of fun activities: breaking from routine, relaxing, and bridging awkwardness, providing opportunity to chat and enjoy companionship of others.

Finally, through his blockchain project on ‘decentralized authentic wellbeing assessment as a new vector to put the “whole well-being” at the core of education, Francois Sicard (Lecturer in Science and Engineering, Arts & Sciences Department) highlighted that measuring the overall well-being of both students and members of staff accurately in higher education remains particularly challenging.

He indicated that the difficulty comes not only from the complexity of developing comprehensive models reflecting overall well-being accurately, but also from the need for more reliable authentic well-being assessment protocols.

Francois referred to the benefits and advantages of using blockchain technologies to implement an open and accessible community-led tool that can support the production of new and reliable knowledge on the “whole academic education well-being” in higher education.

Final words: Be easy on yourself

The day ended with an Alumni Talkshow led by two BASc students (Devaki Jayal and Ibukun Osibona) with support from four former alumni.

Talking about their resilience, wellbeing and life after UCL, the alumni highlighted the need for selfcare, but also accepting that your first job may not be your ‘forever job’, be prepared to shift your career goals, talk to people, eat well and most of all do not be too hard on yourself!

We are currently in the process of developing a website for the Eclectic Resilience Hub. Upcoming projects include a piece of work on Mental Health Literacy in the UK and Indonesian context, as well as ‘Eclectic Resilience’ in the context of child migration.

Created by Simona Aimar (UCL Vice Dean EDI for Arts & Humanities) and Jesper Hansen (UCL Arena Center), who co-lead the EDI stream in the UCL Centre for Humanities Education, the EDI Dialogues @ UCL focus on all things EDI, and take shape in conversation with UCL Arts & Humanities staff members, students, as well as external interlocutors.

Listen to Episode 1 on Affirmative Action in the US (in conversation with Amin Afrouzi, Yale Law). A dialogue with Amin Ebrahimi Afrouzi on when the absence of affirmative action is unconstitutional in the US. Amin puts forward a proposal about jurisprudence and EDI, with a specific focus to the US context.

Participants: Amin Ebrahimi Afrouzi (Yale Law), Artem Massey (UCL Philosophy), Kirstine La Cour (UCL Philosophy), Simona Aimar (UCL Vice Dean EDI for Arts & Humanities), and Jesper Hansen (UCL Arena Center)