Our Collections

Stages of colonialism in Africa: From occupation of land to occupation of being

By Hussein A. Bulhan

This paper draws on the author’s scholarship, supplemented by the limited academic resources available in the “peripheries” of the world where the author lives and works (namely, Somali society and Darfur, Sudan), to consider the relationship between colonialism and psychology.

It takes into consideration the history of psychology in justifying and bolstering oppression and colonialism. Then considers the ongoing intersection of colonialism and psychology in the form of metacolonialism (or coloniality). To decolonize psychological science, it is necessary to transform its focus from promotion of individual happiness to cultivation of collective well-being, from a concern with instinct to promotion of human needs, from prescriptions for adjustment to affordances for empowerment, from treatment of passive victims to creation of self-determining actors, and from globalizing, top-down approaches to context-sensitive, bottom-up approaches. Only then will the field realize its potential to advance Frantz Fanon’s call for humane and just social order.

Read the article here.

Layered spaces: a pedagogy of uncomfortable reflexivity in Indigenous education

By Ailie McDowall

University disciplines are grappling with how best to incorporate Indigenous content and frameworks for practice into their teaching to better prepare graduates to work with Indigenous communities. Yet the pedagogical approaches that can best engage students in Indigenous Studies as a field of critical study are still being debated.

This article has two aims. The first is to consider how an uncomfortable reflexivity may provide an alternative theoretical and methodological approach to preparing university students for future work. The second aim is to consider Nakata’s cultural interface as a teaching tool that may open discussion around how professionals embody the disciplinary histories that govern their work.

Read more here.

Coloniality of Power and Eurocentrism in Latin America

By Aníbal Quijano

The globalization of the world is, in the first place, the culmination of a process that began with the constitution of America and world capitalism as a Euro-centered colonial/modern world power. One of the foundations of that pattern of power was the social classification of the world population upon the base of the idea of race, a mental construct that expresses colonial experience and that pervades the most important dimensions of world power, including its specific rationality: Eurocentrism. This article discusses some implications of that coloniality of power in Latin American history.

Read more here.

Decolonization is not a metaphor

By Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang

The easy adoption of decolonizing discourse by educational advocacy and scholarship, evidenced by the increasing number of calls to “decolonize our schools,” or use “decolonizing methods,” or, “decolonize student thinking”, turns decolonization into a metaphor.

In this article, they analyze multiple settler moves towards innocence in order to forward“an ethic of incommensurability” that recognizes what is distinct and what is sovereign for project(s) of decolonization in relation to human and civil rights based social justice projects. They also point to unsettling themes within transnational/Third World decolonizations, abolition, and critical space-place pedagogies, which challenge the coalescence of social justice endeavors, making room for more meaningful potential alliances.

Read the article here.

Good hair: perceptions of racism

OpenLearn film

How does racism manifest itself in schools and workplaces?

Explore the policies that discriminate against Black and Minority Ethnic communities in this immersive film interactive here.

The OpenLearn film, Good Hair, has won the Jury prize for best short film that explores social Issues at this year’s International Black and Diversity Awards in Canada. 

The film was also shortlisted for best drama at the British Short Film Awards and received an honourable mention at the London Rocks Film Festival.

Decolonising Global Health for Early Career Researchers

The Circle U. European University Alliance brings together students and academics across European institutions. At Circle U.’s 2022 ‘Rethinking Global Health’ Summer School, the group of early career researchers was especially engaged with content on decolonising global health.

They took steps to remotely build a network focused on actions early career researchers (ECRs) can take to be proactive allies for decolonisation efforts. Representing seven institutions, they are working towards Circle U.’s vision of an interdisciplinary European university by sharing perspectives from their specialisms in literature, philosophy, medicine, public health, epidemiology, and health services research.

In 2023 they were awarded a King’s Circle U. Seed Fund grant to hold a two day hybrid meeting, by a range of experts, followed by a half day workshop discussing learning and next steps.

Stolen tools

An anti-racist journal dedicated to centring the voices of racialised minorities within health inequalities research. 

The journal aims to provide a creative platform for diverse racialised voices to be emotionally expressive about racism rooted in academia, challenge their self-censorship in research and share knowledge in a way which is understandable by a diverse range of voices: not just academics.  

The journal’s team takes inspiration from the Audre Lorde quote, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”, by upending traditional journal structures and creating their own tools for sharing knowledge.

Their first issue is out now. Read it here.

Teaching in cultural psychiatry: towards a decolonial attitude

By Danilo Silveira Seabra, Lívia Ciaramello Vieira, Luciana Andrade Calvalho and Lucas Naufal Macedo

This essay explores how teaching cultural psychiatry in the University of Sao Paulo is a form of decolonial teaching as it makes psychiatrists more apt to face the different clinical scenarios in a country full of contradictions such as Brazil.

Read more here.

Race matters in mental health: A view from inside mental health practice

By Suman Fernando

Institutional Racism in Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology is a book that explores race matters in mental health

Both ‘mental illness’ and ‘race’ are problematic concepts seriously challenged by sociological and historical study across cultures and continents. The nature of services for human beings provided under the umbrella of ‘mental health care’ is about lives of real people in real personal and social trouble partly, if not entirely, because of stigma, discrimination and oppressions. Ethnic minorities in Western societies, especially black people, are notoriously over-represented among people referred to mental health services underpinned by psychiatry and clinical psychology (the ‘psy’ disciplines).  But are the problems they face best seen as medical or even psychological problems?  And why are minorities seen as racial groups so seriously disadvantaged when they get caught up in the mental health system? 

Read more here.

Somalinimo: a love letter to Somali culture, blackness and Islam at Cambridge University

Young, British and Somali at Cambridge University

As students return to universities around the world, four British-Somali students talk about navigating one of Britain’s most elite institutions: Cambridge University. Their identity is rooted in Somalinimo (‘the essence of being Somali’) and in this love letter to Somali culture, blackness and Islam, they reflect on both belonging and marginalisation.  The women discuss conflicts with their parents, the sense of solidarity they have built at Cambridge, and the legacy they are creating for the next generation of British-Somalis. They give new meaning to an old Somali proverb: ‘Clothing that is not yours cannot shelter you from the cold’

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