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.