The past few months in Britain have seen a growing ridiculing of calls to decolonize the curriculum. However, these criticisms have failed to understand what decolonizing the curriculum is really about, writes Ali Meghji. From the prime minister claiming that Britain needed to move on from the ‘cringing embarrassment’ it has towards its previous empire,... Continue Reading →
Join the Cambridge Students' Union for a day of panels, workshops, and conversations on race, resistance, and radical futures at Cambridge.
No.910 (2024) explores the afterlives of the 2023 earthquakes in Antakya, tracing how those relegated to the periphery - both geographically and politically - navigate spatial and temporal limbo whilst asserting their claims to recognition and justice.
Join us for a film screening of Like A Rolling Stone (2024) , followed by a panel discussion with the director, Yin Lichuan, alongside Prof. Dai Jinhua, Prof. Mara Viveros Vigoya, Prof. Manali Desai, Dr. Shannon Philip and Prof. Mónica Moreno Figueroa, who will offer further insights into themes present in the film, including gender roles, domestic labour, and psychological violence.
When we think of the Amazon, we often think of pristine, wild nature. What we don’t expect to see is vast ferries and barges. But that’s exactly what the Tapajó people in the Brazilian Amazon are seeing. Activist and filmmaker Priscila Tapajowara documents how modern transportation is impacting her community, as their river undergoes significant changes to make way for the shipping industry.
Unequal relationships, racism and dispossession still survive and even become more acute supported by the so-called green transitions. The elites, corporations and nations that dominate our planet intend to confront the enormous environmental challenges we are facing in the 21st century through disastrous business-as-usual or more accurately colonial-as-usual solutions.
Join Adèle Oliver and the Homerton Anti-Racist Reading Collective to explore creative expression & music as beacons of resistance.
We're supporting a new series of workshops through Lent and Easter term to explore creative methodologies and are inviting MPhils, PhDs and postdocs to participate! About the series These workshops focus on creative methodologies as alternative ways of being, thinking, and doing within the academy. Our aim is to foster a collaborative space where doctoral students... Continue Reading →
Even though extensive bodies of scholarship proclaim white supremacy, racial capitalism, and coloniality to be global structures, South-East Europe is one of the regions often invisibilized in such conversations.
Join Cambridge Palsoc and the Amnesty Society for a panel event exploring the facts and consequences of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and how accountability and justice for these crimes are being sought.
Join us for a special evening of solidarity and hope! We invite you to bring your family and friends to Parkers Piece on January 25th at 5pm for a peaceful and meaningful walk-through Cambridge City Centre.
Undisciplined is an odyssey into possibility. Challenging us to break free from limiting strictures and structures, it encourages readers to envision just futures and reflect on the inner transformation required to become the custodians of those worlds.
Monday, 11 November, 11:00 am -12:30 pm (in-person only). Room GS5, Donald McIntyre Building,Faculty of Education, 184 Hills Road. We've been invited to join the Transnational Anti-racism in Education Programme in welcoming Prof. Michael Burawoy (University of California, Berkeley) for the talk, Exiting Settler Colonialism: Palestine/Israel through a South African Lens. Following his talk, Prof. Burawoy... Continue Reading →
Please join us for the first Decolonise Sociology meeting of term on Friday 1 November, 2-3 pm, in the Sociology Seminar Room. We would like to invite all interested members of our community, undergraduates, postgraduates, postdocs, lecturers and researchers to join the Decolonise Sociology working group. It is an important space to create community and push... Continue Reading →
Date and time: Fri 1 Nov 2024 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM **Venue updated** Sociology Seminar Room, Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RQ (map). Tickets (free): https://app.tickettailor.com/events/globalracismsinstitute/1433883 Gaza has long been home to a resilient and skilled tech community. Before October 2023, thousands of Gazans earned income online in... Continue Reading →
Rusha Latif's talk is based on her new book Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution. She will challenge the commonly held belief that the 2011 Egyptian revolution was spontaneous and leaderless, through a provocative new account of the revolutionaries—one that foregrounds their solidarity with Palestinians as a key catalyst behind their revolt.
Scholars from different backgrounds will share their ideas about the meaning and relevance of decolonial theory in archaeology and heritage. The conference brings together a diverse range of scholars active in different parts of the world to discuss the relevance and meaning of decolonial theory in archaeology. Decoloniality is essentially practice, but discussing its underlying... Continue Reading →
Join an interactive conversation between Professor Eduardo Bonilla Silva and Professor Arathi Sriprakash about the meanings of racism and anti-racism, as well as reparations and educational spaces. This event is part of the Thinking Us festival and will be followed by a drinks reception (19.30-20.30) and live performance by the Frida Violeta Band. Book your... Continue Reading →
For event details and to register, visit: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/decolonisesociology/1161081 About the Collaboration The Decolonial Centre, a new project of the Pluto Educational Trust, invites you to join the movement towards anti-colonialism, decoloniality, and decolonization. We are opening an inclusive space for students from all disciplines to hold critical discussions, share knowledge and plan activity aimed at... Continue Reading →
Date: Wednesday 28 February 2024, 12:15 – 14:00 Location: Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge (go to event) Speaker: Dr Areej Sabbagh-Khoury Chair: Dr Chana Morgenstern About the book Based on extensive empirical research in local colony and national archives, Dr Areej Sabbagh-Khoury's Colonizing Palestine offers a microhistory of frontier interactions between Zionist settlers and... Continue Reading →
All out for Palestine 29 November is observed as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People since 1978. This Wednesday, we'll be marching to St Mary's for a rally in solidarity with the people of Palestine: 11.45 Walk out and assemble at Downing Site (Pembroke Street) or Sidgewick Site (MML) 11.55 March to Kings... Continue Reading →
You're warmly invited to the second Decolonise Sociology working group meeting of term on Wednesday 22 November, 4-6pm, in the Sociology Seminar Room and on Zoom (please email us to receive the zoom link). If you are able to join us in person please do, as we aren't always able to facilitate the same experience... Continue Reading →
This resource base was compiled and circulated by Cambridge UCU and Cambridge PalSoc at their Gaza teach-In on 31 October 2023. It is archived here with permission from the organisers. This resource base collates together a range of "Palestine 101" resources, including; Courses and Curricula, Maps + Visualizations, Data + Databases, Archives + Oral Histories,... Continue Reading →
Please join us for the first Decolonise Sociology working group meeting of term on Wednesday 18 October, 4-6 pm, in the Sociology Seminar Room. We would like to invite all interested members of our community, undergraduates, postgraduates, postdocs, lecturers and researchers to join the Decolonise Sociology working group. It is an important space to create community and... Continue Reading →
Our decolonise sociology reading group "The Undisciplined Readers" will be starting on Friday 28th Jan at 12:30- 1:30pm UK. This term we are excited to be collaborating with artists and academics from "Monumentoclasm: workshop in anti-colonial imagination" for this term. We will be meeting bi-weekly to discuss pre-circulated texts. Meetings and Readings Friday 28th Jan (12:30pm) - De... Continue Reading →
Decolonise Sociology supports and amplifies the following statement from the Race Equality Network in relation to the recent racist attacks in Cambridge. The Race Equality Network stands in solidarity with Asian staff and students at the University of Cambridge, as well as Asian members of the wider Cambridge community, who have increasingly been the targets... Continue Reading →
Committee Meetings The committee is chaired this year by Dr Ali Meghji. Meetings in Michaelmas term will take place at the times below via Zoom. These meetings are open to all and we particularly encourage new sociology students to attend. Join our mailing list to receive the zoom links for each session. Thur 14 Oct... Continue Reading →
Starting in Easter Term, this new reading group will discuss decolonial scholarship from a range of different disciplines. You can find the proposed reading list for the Undisciplined Readers below. If you would be interested in joining this group, or for or more information, please email Iris Pissaride. Literature and Archives Saidiya Hartman (2008) Venus... Continue Reading →
The SOAS Latin American Society is thrilled to announce our fourth Politics event of the year and our second event of the Black Lives Matter: Latin America series: Blackness and Race in Mexico. The event will take the form of a discussion, primarily led by questions pre-prepared by our hosts: the Society's President and our... Continue Reading →
We are very pleased to announce the opening of a part-time internship opportunity with Cambridge University Libraries to work on the upgrading of our Decolonising through critical librarianship platform. The site, launched in autumn 2019 and run by Cambridge library staff, currently holds 19 pages of resources and case studies concerning decolonisation in libraries, with numerous UK and international... Continue Reading →
Winner of four Academy Awards, a Golden Globe, and the Palme d'Or, Parasite touches on the dynamics of exploitation, class conflict, and the internalization of a capitalist subjectivity in the microcosm of a wealthy South Korean home, and a family's attempt to escape its systemic deprivation. On Thursday 26 Nov 2020 at 5pm, the Cambridge... Continue Reading →
The Connected Sociologies Curriculum Project is led by Prof Gurminder Bhambra and is designed to support students and teachers interested in ‘decolonising’ school, college, and university curricula. It provides resources for the rethinking of sociological concepts, categories, and topics that will enable us to make better sense of the worlds we inhabit. This supplements and... Continue Reading →
Critical Race Theory is not anti-white, and it does not portray all people of colour as victims, writes Dr Ali Meghji for the i.
The coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement have exposed racial inequalities in new ways. Join the conversation this term about practices in the Department and in Cambridge, as well as following racial justice movements across the globe. [read more]
In this MPhil dissertation, Joe Cotton traces the emergence of the decolonisation movement in Cambridge and describes the various efforts and initiatives across the University. He writes: "Broadly speaking, decolonisation at Cambridge calls for a rigorous, reflexive and historically-aware curriculum, at an equitable, just and genuinely inclusive university, which refuses to enact or support neo-colonial... Continue Reading →
"I find it unbearable to see how we keep using these completely false ideas about humans and people. These false beliefs about our differences deny us opportunities to develop and collaborate and to do things together and to grow as humans. We are so distracted by racism, that's what infuriates me." Dr Mónica Moreno Figueroa... Continue Reading →
Co-chair of the Decolonise Sociology Committee Dr Mónica Moreno Figueroa reflects on the shortcomings of institutional solidarity statements issued in response to Black Lives Matter. You can listen to the podcast of this transcript on The Naked Scientist (11:38-14:22). What I think is interesting as an outcome of Black Lives Matter is the reaction that... Continue Reading →
Decolonisation in higher education means coming to terms with colonial legacies, writes Dr Manali Desai in The Guardian.
We, the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) staff network of the University of Cambridge, UK, write to send our condolences to the family of George Floyd on his tragic death. We are both shocked and angered at how he was killed, and that these brutal killings continue to occur. We also write to publicly... Continue Reading →
In this thread, Lecturer in Social Inequalities Dr Ali Meghji (@alim1213) provides "twitter abstracts" on sociology readings that can help us to understand systemic racism in the US. His notes cover over a century's worth of critical thought from Ida B Wells and WEB Du Bois in 1898 to Louise Seamster and Victor Ray in... Continue Reading →
Theatre collective 20 Stories High have created a useful resource with information on how to support the fight against racism (now and into the future), signposting for people that want to learn how to be better allies, and accounts to follow to stay updated locally, nationally and internationally.
Watch Dr Priyamvada Gopal and George the Poet in conversation about Cambridge, slavery, colonialism and decolonisation, as well as the motivational role of anger, navigating identity politics, and feelings of statelessness as an immigrant. Watch on Al Jazeera
This year's Green Week is full of exciting events exploring the historic relationship between capitalism, colonialism, and the climate crisis. These events seek to centre the voices of the communities most impacted by extractivism and climate breakdown, and amplify their demands for justice. We will discuss what meaningful climate justice looks like, and how we... Continue Reading →
Misguided assumptions about race are going mainstream, but hard facts can help you combat entrenched attitudes, writes Adam Rutherford in The Guardian.
Join us for a term packed full of events, as well as continuing decolonisation work in the department and strategising for the future. We're always looking for new members!
Read our termcard
https://youtu.be/XOXKTCSikNU Kalwant Bhopal is a Professor of Education and Social Justice and Deputy Director of the Centre for Research in Race & Education (CRRE) at the University of Birmingham. Her research explores how processes of racism, exclusion and marginalisation operate in predominantly white spaces with a focus on social justice and inclusion. In this video,... Continue Reading →
On the 28th of January (5:30pm, Main Lecture Theatre, Old Divinity School) Decolonise Politics will be hosting a panel with Dr Shruti Kapila, Dr Tom Hopkins, and Dr Tejas Parasher to discuss and question the relationship between global intellectual history and decolonisation. The connection between decolonisation and global intellectual history is not a straightforward one.... Continue Reading →
Watch the 8th Annual Equality Lecture at the British Library, delivered by Prof Kalwant Bhopal, which provides statistical evidence for the attainment, employment and wage gaps between white and black staff and students in the UK education system.
This open forum is an extension of Dr Mónica Moreno Figueroa's Undergraduate Sociology paper "SOC 11: Race, Racism and Ethnicity". The event is supported by Decolonise Sociology and will be led by Prof Manuel Barcia from the University of Leeds. Continue Reading →
Decolonise Sociology @ Cambridge 