ON THURSDAY 24 MARCH 2022 WE PRESENTED AND DISCUSSED OUR RECENTLY CONDUCTED 'BLUEPRINT STUDY' FOR A MASTER IN DIASPORA, RACE AND LIBERATION STUDIES, FOLLOWED BY LIVELY DEBATES, POETRY AND DANCE.
Calls to decolonize the university in South Africa and the United Kingdom starting in 2015, and have also been present in Europe. These calls grew gradually and intensified after the Black Lives Matter global uprising of 2020. Can universities be fully and structurally decolonized? What is certain, is initiatives can contribute to more racial justice for students and communities of colour. One of the possible initiatives in that strand is the creation of a Master Programme in Critical Diaspora, Race and Liberation Studies (Adefioye, 2021).
The idea to create such a master programme starts from the notion that racialized and marginalized people's lives are not sufficiently archived within Belgian society. The contribution of racialized minorities to the arts, sciences, philosophical debates, mobilizations for social justice is not known widely, and is not sufficiently taught at universities. The creation of a master programme in Diaspora, Race and Liberation Studies could archive, valorize and teach these contributions, create safer and braver spaces for racialized students and deliver a modest contribution to more racial justice and decolonized knowledge production.
For this 'Blueprint Study' we realized a literature review on how similar master programmes in the USA, the UK and elsewhere have contributed (or not) to more racial justice. We also interviewed and conducted focus groups with students, individuals from communities and academics of colour. We asked them which decolonial archiving and teaching practices already exist, and how an ideal critical ethnic and racial studies master should look like.
DURING THE EVENT SOME SUMMARIES OF THE "BLUEPRINT STUDY" WERE DISTRIBUTED TO THE PARTICIPANTS.
- If you were unable to attend the event or would like to learn more about this study, you can download a copy of the summary here: Summary Blueprint Study.pdf (1021 KB) (1020.91 KB) "pdf"
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