Diversifying higher education curricula has been called for as one way to reduce racial inequalities in higher education. This study makes an original contribution by focusing on images of people in lecture slides. We explored how people of colour versus white individuals were portrayed in images (n = 250) used in lecture slides in four first-year…

Despite the ongoing 'globalization' of higher education, the curricula of most contemporary universities continue to be based upon epistemological assumptions deeply rooted in the Western philosophical tradition. Critiques of this lingering hegemony are evident in the growing calls for the decolonization of knowledge to make way for indigenous and…

Enlightened by a student teaching presentation in a foundational educational studies course, I became committed to recognizing and unlearning practices of colonialism and oppression in my classrooms and teaching practice. Using critical autoethnography as the mode of inquiry, and drawing relationships between the Characteristics of White Supremacy…

Institution-wide curriculum change is a costly, time-intensive and politically fraught undertaking. It is a challenge identifying who has responsibility for the curriculum and who is empowered to change it. The unbundling of the traditional tri-partite academic role of teaching, research and service leaves a gap of who in those communities decides…

Decolonising work in Higher Education (HE) has become increasingly mainstreamed. One issue is the relationship between such work and that of equality, diversity and inclusivity (EDI), or the potential reduction and co-option of decolonising for EDI purposes. This article discusses the characterisations of, and drivers for, decolonising inside UK…

The continued erasure of place and politics from modernity's education systems and disciplinary knowledges perpetuates racialised and ecological injustices and extractive relations. In this paper I affirm the necessity of using evolving methods of critical place inquiry and relocalisation in higher education to redress these erasures. I illustrate…

Student voice in governance and decision-making has become ubiquitous in higher education, evolving from buzzword to orthodoxy. Student engagement measures have become instruments of quality control, with students expected to take an active role in shaping institutional policy and practice. In this paper, we argue that this ubiquity of demands for…

This study explores the agency of academics and the structures that enable or impede agency in curriculum change. The study was conducted at a research university that experienced curriculum change in two waves: the first on a departmental level, and the second as a university-wide curriculum change. Interviews were conducted with the same…

In this paper, I explore whether and how white people can make a meaningful contribution to decolonising university curricula. Drawing on my experiences as a white academic teaching at a South African university, I argue that identity matters when talking about decoloniality and that whites need to think carefully about the effects of their…

While more and more universities in traditionally non-Anglophone countries are moving towards English medium instruction (EMI), those of the nominally Anglophone postcolonial world are carrying on with business as usual. Higher education in many postcolonial countries has typically only ever been available through the language of the former…

A concerted attempt to offer a temporal lens (the way we make sense of and relate to time changes) underlying decolonizing pedagogy and curriculum (DCP) remains absent. Drawing on student resistance as an entry point, we offer a temporal account of DCP by unearthing the entanglements between past, present, and future underlying DCP enactments. We…

This study addresses the challenges concerning the internationalisation of higher education, with a particular focus on designing new international programmes. It presents a case study of a novel international study programme: the MA in Media Education at the Faculty of Education at the University of Lapland, Finland. The study looks into its…

Since the colonial era, Latin American universities have been subjected to narratives about what it means to be a university. Drawing on the concept of coloniality, this paper examines curricular and teaching practices in higher education that aim to decolonise Latin American universities, a particular topic that has been under-investigated. By…

Amid the rising calls for a 'decolonised curriculum', scholars and activists have outlined what needs to be done to 'decolonise the university'. Yet in practice, those involved in decolonising work often face considerable backlash and institutional resistance. Drawing on empirical research with students and staff across nine universities in…

The purpose of this article is to argue for the deconstruction rather than the decolonisation of the neocolonial curriculum. Globalisation facilitates the democratisation of higher education, which is now accessible to more people than ever before, but globalisation also facilitates the expansion of the ideological dominance of the Global North…