Possibilities and Perils of Decolonising the classroom in IMES: session 1

About the event:

Over the past few years, institutional responses towards 'decolonising the University' have been met with healthy scepticism by critics who yield caution towards hollowed out inclusion politics. While representation remains relevant, the 'add, mix and stir approach' to transforming the University including at the level of the curricula does little to change the epistemic and material investments upon which the University was founded and draws its legacy from today. The on-going genocide in Gaza has brought into full view the thin veil between liberalism and fascism, resulting in the shrinking of institutional space to speak about decolonial praxis, in Palestine, the UK and elsewhere. This discussion considers what is at stake in calls towards decolonising the University today when such calls are met with overt and covert silencing and securitisation? What is new and old about this conversation and how do we hold ground in ways that remain true to the spirit of anti-colonial liberation movements?

This event is organised by the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh and co-badged with RACE.ED. Funded by the Institute for Academic Development's Student Partnership Agreement fund, it is the first of three participatory sessions that will run in Semester 2 (between January and April 2024) on the topic of Curriculum Decolonisation in IMES and beyond. These sessions will focus specifically on discussing and planning for how to decolonise the curricula within IMES, as well as reflecting on how knowledge and praxis within IMES can contribute towards decolonising work across the university.

This first introductory session will be led by Adam Ferron (Project lead, IMES) and Dr Shaira Vadasaria (Lecturer in Race and Decolonial studies, Sociology). It is co-organised in partnership with RaceED (https://www.race.ed.ac.uk/)

Adam Ferron is a fourth-year politics PhD student at the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies (IMES). They earned an MA in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the SOAS, and an MSc in Middle Eastern Studies with Arabic from the University of Edinburgh. Prior to coming to Edinburgh, they were Scholar-in-Residence at the Council for British Research in the Levant based in Amman, Jordan. Their current ESRC-funded research concentrates upon the political use of Twitter by religious actors in Saudi Arabia. They are Project Lead for the Institute for Academic Development’s funded project, Curriculum Decolonisation in IMES and beyond, and are a part of various decolonial enterprises including The Decolonising Wikipedia Network and The Decolonial Critique. They have a background in research and policy work in both local government , and the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London.

Dr Shaira Vadasaria is lecturer in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh and former Assistant Professor at Al-Quds University, Bard College. She serves as the co-director of RACE.ED, a research and teaching repository that builds literacy on the study of race, racialisation and decolonial studies. Her research and teaching is grounded in methodological and epistemological inquiry around race and racial violence as it changes form and political order under empire and settler colonialism. Her recent publications include: "Sensory Politics of Return: Hearing Gaza under Siege" in Gaza on Screen (Duke University Press, 2023, ed Nadia Yaqub); “Race and Colonialism in Socio-Legal Studies in Canada” in Violence, Imagination, and Resistance: Socio-Legal Interrogations of Power (Athabasca University Press, 2023, ed Mariful Alam, Patrick Dwyer and Katrin Roots) and “1948-1951: The Racial Politics of Humanitarianism in Palestine,” Oñati Socio-Legal Studies, 2020.

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