In this keynote Prof. Heidi Safia Mirza draws on black and postcolonial feminist perspectives to explore ways in which professional black and female academics engage in ‘embodied’ work towards decolonizing dominant regimes of ‘diversity’ in higher education. In the context of the significant numbers of Muslim, Black and Asian students who are now entering British higher education Prof. Mirza unpacks the ways in which ‘just being there’ creates unsettling spaces of contestation in our still overwhelmingly white and male universities. Drawing on her research on the pedagogic practices of teacher educators and their dilemmas of teaching race, faith and culture, she explores the challenging and difficult concepts of ‘white hurt’ and ‘spaces of safety’ which offers us the radical possibility of transcending the ‘stuck’ institutional discourses of ‘race equality’ and ‘social inclusion’ that dominate higher education.

Heidi Safia Mirza is Professor of Race, Faith and Culture at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is known for her pioneering research on race, gender and identity among black and Muslim young women in school and processes of racialisation in higher education. Her recent work explores current debates on multiculturalism and diversity in education, as well as cultural and religious difference, Islamophobia and gendered violence.

Prof. Mirza delivered her Keynote Speech Decolonizing Pedagogies: Black feminist reflections on teaching race, faith and culture in higher education at The European Conference on Education 2014 (ECE2014) in Brighton, England.

You can find a video of this podcast below: