SOAS Festival of Ideas Podcast: The Decolonising Debate

The SOAS Festival of Ideas has a principle aim of fostering research synergies and enabling cross-disciplinary conversations within SOAS and throughout higher education in the West. The festival will celebrate and be shaped around the core theme of ‘decolonising knowledge’. At the heart of the Festival of Ideas is meant to be a debate. We have invited four speakers (Professors Margo Okazawa-Rey, and Yamila Hussein-Shannan and ‘FOR’ decolonising-- with a special message from Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith. Dr Kehinde Andrews and Dr Brian Alleyne ‘AGAINST’ decolonising higher education).

This Oxford-style debate considers our location ‘in the heart of Britain post-Brexit in this period of late-capitalism to ask the burning question, Should we decolonise higher education?’ Some of the themes our speakers will consider for the debate are:

What is the meaning of decolonisation?
Why do we need to decolonise?
Whose history matters and why?
What are the structures that impede us?
Is there a desynchronisation between academics as knowledge producers and students as customers in higher education? And what role does this changing dynamics play in the decolonising debate?
How do we understand race and racialisation?

Find out more at: www.soas.ac.uk/fest-ideas/