Teaching

In 2021, RACE.ED inaugurated a new cross-university pre-honours course entitled “Understanding Race and Colonialism (SSPS0801)”.  URC is a multidisciplinary course that provides an overview of the major issues at stake in the study of race, racialization and decoloniality from a broadly conceived social science and humanities tradition. It draws expertise from colleagues around the University working directly in the field of race and (de)colonial.

RACE.ED’s 2022 intern Yuke Huang did the incredible work of updating RACE.ED’s teaching portfolio section on our website so as to highlight pre-existing and new UoE course listed pertaining to questions of race, colonialism/coloniality and decolonial studies. The course listed canvass these areas to different degrees – some anchored entirely in the study versus others that take on the subjects in a peripheral way. We congratulate those in the RACE.ED network for making this content matter and matter meaningfully in our courses and pedagogy.

School of Geosciences

Geography

SCQF Level 11:

• Professional Skills in Environment and Development
• Centring Racial Justice in Sustainability Transformations

SCQF Level 10:

• Black Geographies (not running in 2026/27)
• Development and Decolonization in Latin America (not running in 2026/27)
• Geographies of Food
• Geographies of the Border 
• Queer Geographies: Spatialising Sexuality and Gender
• Race, Power, and Social Policy

School of Divinity

Divinity

Postgraduate Level

SCQF Level 10:

• God of the Oppressed: Liberation Theologies in Christianity and Islam (not running in 2026/27)

School of History, Classics and Archaeology

History

Postgraduate Level

SCQF Level 11:

• Black Activism in Britain since 1800 (not running in 2026/27)

Undergraduate Level

SCQF Level 10:

• Carnival in the Atlantic World: Play, Power and Politics 
• Representations of Blackness in Britain and Europe, 1800 – 1950 (not running in 2026/27)
• Revolution and Reform in the Modern Middle East (not running in 2026/27)
• Gandhi and Popular Movements in India 1915 – 1950 
• Post-Colonial South Asia

SCQF Level 8:

• Early Modern History: A Connected World
• Global Connections since 1450
• The Historian’s Toolkit
• Introduction to Historiography

School of Literature, Languages and Cultures

Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies

Postgraduate Level

SCQF Level 11:

• Muslims in Europe

Undergraduate Level

SCQF Level 10:

• Recognition Struggles in Contemporary France (not running in 2026/27)

English Literature

Postgraduate/Undergraduate Level

SCQF Level 10/11:

• Decolonization and the Novel 
• Contemporary Postcolonial Writing 
• Education and Empire: Decolonising the Mind (not running in 2026/27)
• Commodities of Empire: Colonialism, Ecology, Culture 
• Postcolonial Writing (not running in 2026/27)

Edinburgh College of Art

History of Art

Postgraduate Level

SCQF Level 11:

• Modern and Contemporary Art of the Black Atlantic 
• Digital Islamic Art History 
• Idolatry: Images and the Sacred in the Americas and Europe, 1400-1700

Undergraduate Level

SCQF Level 10:

• The Politics of Postwar Abstraction: Diaspora, Decolonisation, Liberation 
• Imaging/Imagining the Americas: Cartography and Ecology across the Renaissance Atlantic
• The Arts in the Age of Great Caliphs 650 – 1250

• Stars, Robots, and Talismans: Science, Magic & Medieval Islamic Visual Culture 

Design

Undergraduate Level

SCQF Level 10:

• Surfaces & Screens

SCQF Level 8:

• Modernism and After

Postgraduate Level

• Surfaces & Screens

Architectural History

Undergraduate Level

SCQF Level 10:

• Landscapes of Empire 

SCQF Level 8:

• Urbanism and the City: Past to Present

School of Social and Political Sciences

Centre of African Studies

Postgraduate Level

Sociology

SCQF Level 10:

• Advanced Issues in the Political Economy of Development (not running in 2026/27)
• Advanced Issues in the Making of Contemporary Africa (not running in 2026/27)
• Anthropology of Race and Racism
• Contemporary Feminist Debates
• Nations and Nationalism
• Sociology of Emotions
• Race and Ethnicity 
• Social Theory

SCQF Level 8:

• Understanding Race and Colonialism
• Sociology 2a: Thinking Sociologically

Social Anthropology

SCQF Level 10:

• Culture and Power

Politics

SCQF Level 10:

• Law, Violence, and Humanity

SCQF Level 8:

• Political Thinkers

Social Policy

SCQF Level 10:

• Race, Power and Social Policy
• Social Inequality and the Life Course

School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences

Philosophy

Postgraduate Level

SCQF Level 11:

• Black Male Studies: Understanding Racism as Misandric Aggression

Undergraduate Level

SCQF Level 10:

• Radical Black Philosophies of Race and Racism (Not running in 2024/25)

School of Law

Law

SCQF Level 11:

• Public Health Ethics

SCQF Level 11:

• Asylum and Refugee Law and Policy (not running in 2026/27)

Edinburgh Futures Institute

SCQF Level 11:

• Coloniality of Data (not running in 2026/27)

Moray House School of Education and Sport

Education

SCQF Level 11:

• Accessible and Inclusive Learning
• Critical Literacies and Critical Pedagogies in L1 and L2 Contexts (not running in 2026/27)

Business School

Business Studies

SCQF Level 11:

• Corporate Responsibility

SCQF Level 10:

• The Future of Work (not running in 2026/27)

School of Health in Social Science

School of Health in Social Science

SCQF Level 11:

• Decolonising Self, Therapy and Society: Psychosocial Reflections