Our first event was a webinar scheduled for 21 March 2023 – as this is the international day for the elimination of racial discrimination. It seemed like a great time to launch the network and Professors Ilina Singh and Keisha S. Ray had accepted our invitation to speak. However, as the UCU strike action is ongoing, we made the decision to cancel the event and arrange an alternative. In lieu of the webinar, we organised a limited series of podcasts exploring “power and privilege in academia”. Each podcast is led by one of the BBB co-founders, and it is in conversation with different academics committed to advancing social justice. We are grateful to be supported by University of Bristol, Research England and Oxford Podcasts. The series was produced and audio engineered by Faiq Habash, with original music by Qasim Ashraf (kxtone), and business administration by Nicholas Pitt.
Listen to the following episodes:
Inclusivity in Publishing – Dr Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra and Dr Sabrina Germain discuss the injustices, barriers, and challenges faced by minoritised academics in the publishing world, and the changes needed. Recorded on 6 June 2023.
Disrupting hierarchies to transform academia and medicine – Dr Annabel Sowemimo and Professor Amaka Offiah share powerful insights on dismantling hierarchies in academia and medicine, exposing the myths of meritocracy and the urgent need to transform education and healthcare systems. Recorded on 31 July 2023.
Challenging the System: Anti-Racism in Higher Education – Dr Hend Rashed and Princess Banda join us to explore race, equity, and liberation in UK academia, sharing insights on dismantling institutional racism and reimagining what anti-racist education can truly look like. Recorded on 5 July 2023.
Beyond the Ivory Tower: Public Engagement, Class, and Access in Research – Dr Peter Winter and Dr Alan Chamberlain join Matimba Swana to explore elitism in research, the barriers to public engagement and why making research more inclusive and accessible is essential for meaningful community participation. Recorded 11 Oct 2024.
Legacy and Identity: Redefining Dentistry With Antiracist Approaches – Dr Eleanor Fleming reflects on untold histories, antiracism in dentistry, and the role of legacy in shaping identity, practice, and space within academia and beyond the walls of the university to include the communities we serve. Recorded 30 Aug 2024.
Activism and advocacy as a postgraduate – Prof Patricia Kingori, Dr Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra, and Dr Ayesha Ahmad join Kumeri Bandara to explore the opportunities, challenges, and complexities of postgraduate-led activism and advocacy in academia. Recorded on 12 June 2023.
Representation and Research Culture – a US Perspective – US Perspective Prof Keisha S. Ray joins us for a cross-continental conversation on representation and research culture, in which we explore the experiences of racially minoritised researchers working on both sides of the Atlantic. Recorded in July 2023.
More episodes will be released weekly. You can subscribe to the Power and Privilege in Academia episodes on Apple podcasts or the University of Oxford Podcasts website.
Resources and related content
Inclusivity in publishing
Also listen to the podcast where EIC Brandy Schillace speaks to Matimba Swana and Kumeri Bandara about the Black and Brown in Bioethics program, and working harder to bring ECR scholars into print. You can listen to Black and Brown in Bioethics: A new Medical Humanities Research Forum, read the Medical Humanities blog post or visit the page on the Medical Humanities Research Forum.
Disrupting hierarchies to transform academia and medicine
Referenced in the podcast:
- NHS – Race and Health Observatory and University of Manchester published the report – Ethnic Inequalities in Healthcare: A Rapid Evidence Review and Ethnic Inequalities in Healthcare: A Rapid Evidence Review summary by Dharmi Kapadia, Jingwen Zhang, Sarah Salway, James Nazroo, Andrew Booth, Nazmy Villarroel-Williams, Laia Bécares & Aneez Esmail, February 2022
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” Ted Talk, in 2009, explores the negative influences that a “single story” can have as it can rob people of their dignity, and emphasizes there are so many differences amongst those of us who are homogenised under particular labels.
- Professor Lilian Otaye-Ebede becomes the 41st Black Female Professor in the UK
- Generation Delta is an Office for Students/Research England funded project running from 2022-2026, led by six BAME female professors, all of whom are members of the Black Female Professors Forum.
- Melanin medics is a national charity promoting racial diversity in Medicine, widening aspirations and aiding career progression.
Challenging the System: Anti-Racism in Higher Education
Referenced in the podcast:
- the National Museum of African American History and Culture outlines different definitions of racism.
- Equality, equity and liberation: tackling racial bias
- Affirmative action: US Supreme Court overturns race-based college admissions. In Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court upheld the use of race as one of many factors that can be considered in a holistic admissions process. However, in the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions decisions, the Court ruled that race-based admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
- The Complicated History Behind BLM’s Solidarity With The Pro-Palestinian Movement
- Camara Phyllis Jones the gardener’s tale – video, paper
- In 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) inquiry looked at the nature of racial harassment in publicly funded universities in England, Scotland and Wales and produced a report on tackling racial harassment.
- Sheffield BAME Medics Society which Hend co-founded and paper co-authored by Hend on Strategies to tackle racial inequalities in medical school (https://doi.org/10.1111/tct.13413)
- Kline, R. 2014. The snowy white peaks of the NHS: a survey of discrimination in governance and leadership and the potential impact on patient care in London and England. London Middlesex University. https://doi.org/10.22023/mdx.12640421.v1.
Beyond the Ivory Tower: Public Engagement, Class, and Access in Research
Referenced in the podcast:
- A project in 2015 “factors affecting public engagement by researchers ” suggested that public engagement is more embedded in the arts, humanities, and social sciences than in STEM.
- UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Hub assembles a team from the Universities of Southampton, Nottingham and King’s College London.
- Professor Kate Reed’s project Remembering Baby aimed to open up a conversation about the subject baby-loss.
- Wellcome changed their public engagement funding scheme for applications to support their new strategy.
- Andrew Crabtree was the Principle Investigator for Bridging the Rural Divide UKRI project
- The UKRI project Experiencing the Future Mundane was created in conjunction with the BBC R&D
- The NASSS (non-adoption, abandonment, scale-up, spread, sustainability) framework was developed to study technologies in real time in the real world. Trishia Greenhalgh’s paper – https://www.jmir.org/2017/11/e367/
- Jessica Morley is a postdoctoral associate at the Yale Digital Ethics Center, Yale University. These are links to her work – https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=hp-k6QwAAAAJ&hl=en
- University of Bristol public engagement team work to improve the impact of research by collaborating with communities in Bristol and beyond.
- Each year, Festival of Tomorrow shares the latest discoveries, research and developments from organisations and experts from Swindon, the UK and internationally.
- FUTURES is a free festival across venues in Bath, Bristol, Cornwall, Devon, Exeter and Plymouth. Past events include. Futures Up Late at the SS Great Britain.
Legacy and Identity: Redefining Dentistry With Antiracist Approaches
Referenced in the podcast:
- Dr Eleanor Fleming visited Bristol as a Next Generation Visiting Researcher from the 9th January to the 19th February 2024.
- The first African-American male dentist was Robert Tanner Freeman
- The first African-American female dentist was Ida Gray Nelson Rollins
- While it’s difficult to pinpoint the absolute first, one of the first Black professionally registered dentists in the UK was Edward “Eddie” Tull-Warnock. At the time of recording there was no record of the first Black female Dentist in the UK.
- Mayor of London, in 2023 announced plans for a landmark memorial in the capital for the victims of the transatlantic slave trade.
- In West African culture, storytellers, known as Griots (or Jeliw), were highly respected individuals who are born into their role, acting as oral historians, praise singers, and keepers of traditions, often advising royal figures.
- Black birth workers never went away. More recently, they have trained as doulas. Doulas are birth workers who don’t give medical advice. Instead, they offer mental, physical, and emotional support to mothers. Orgs such as National Black Doulas Association and Black Mothers Matter provide doula support.
Activism and advocacy as a postgraduate
In the Polyphony BBB co-founders discuss postgraduate activism and advocacy in UK bioethics, reflecting on a panel hosted by the BBB during the 2023 Postgraduate Bioethics Conference (PGBC23). The reflections highlight the significance of collaboration and advocacy for minority researchers in academia. You can find the full blog post in the Polyphony – https://thepolyphony.org/2023/12/20/bbb-network/.