Institutionalised whiteness, racial microaggressions and Black bodies out of place in Higher Education

Speaker: Remi Joseph-Salisbury (Leeds Beckett University)

Thursday 24th May, 18:00-21:00, University of Westminster, Marylebone campus, 35 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5LS room tbc

This event is free and open to the public. Booking via Eventbrite is essential. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/institutionalised-whiteness-racial-microaggressions-and-black-bodies-out-of-place-in-higher-tickets-44016361121

About the lecture: On the morning of Friday 3rd February 2017, Femi Nylander – a Black Oxford alumnus – walked through the grounds of Oxford University’s Harris Manchester College. Later that morning a CCTV image of Femi was circulated to staff and students who were urged to ‘maintain vigilance’. ‘Post-racial’ ideology insists on framing such incidents as isolated aberrations bereft of wider structural and institutional context. In this lecture, I centralise the voices of student campaigns as sites of legitimate experiential knowledge in order to offer a counter-narrative. In so doing, I draw upon the theoretical concepts of racial microaggressions and bodies out of place as I argue that Femi’s experience cannot be understood in abstraction from structural white supremacy and the institutionalised whiteness that undergirds Higher Education.

About Remi Joseph-Salisbury: Remi Joseph-Salisbury is a Senior Lecturer in Education Studies at Leeds Beckett University, with research primary research interests in race and (anti-)racism. He is a trustee of the Racial Justice Network, and a steering group member of the Northern Police Monitoring Project. He is co-editor of The Fire Now, a forthcoming collection exploring anti-racism in times of explicit racial violence.

Access information: We will arrange for the lecture to be in a room that is wheelchair accessible with accessible toilets nearby. If you face other access barriers or require more detailed accessibility information, please let us know so we can support your full participation. If you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. For more information, contact Jennifer Fraser (j.fraser@westminster.ac.uk)

More information about the Critical Pedagogies Group is available at http://www.bbk.ac.uk/learning-and-teaching/supporting-teaching/critical-pedagogies-group