Awarding Gap Seminar series: Disrupting the Discourse: University Culture Decoded

DMU Education Academy’s Awarding Gap seminar series: Disrupting the Discourse: University Culture Decoded

Sign up now to the DMU Education Academy’s online Awarding Gap seminar series, taking place on Wednesday 26 March, 12noon–1pm, via MS Teams. This third session titled: Disrupting the Discourse: University Culture Decoded, will be hosted by sector-leading expert Kevin J Brazant.

Kevin J Brazant (MALTHE, JNC, SFHEA, UTF CeLP) is the Progression and Attainment Project Manager at the University of the Arts London. His work involves collaborating with schools to address the ethnicity degree awarding gap at the college level. He is a researcher in disruptive pedagogies and practices ‘facilitating learning from the margins’, which foregrounds co-creation in enabling marginalised student voices through decolonising, anti-racism and social justice as part of pedagogy. He authored ‘Disrupting the Discourse: A Co-creation Framework for Centering Racial Justice in Higher Education.’ He manages the Changemakers, a student partner initiative working with students to embed racial and social justice principles as part of the curriculum. Kevin also uses storytelling, podcasting and digital content creation as part of his platform Lounge Akademics, and collaborates with companies and brands committed to social justice as part of knowledge exchange activities and consultancy.

This session will explore the Disrupting the Discourse framework, which uses a methodology of co-design/ co-creation with students and staff to address the intersections of anti-blackness (which includes and is not limited to gender, class, socioeconomic status, immigration background, ableism, etc.) in higher education.

The framework is a unique response to the following contentious themes:

• The systemic (systematic) erasure of Black histories, perspectives and acceptance of original contributions to knowledge from racialised scholars
• Degree and Attainment issues relating to ethnicity and associated characteristics in higher education are better known as the Degree Awarding Gap(s)
• The underrepresentation of Black academic staff and scholarship
• Increase of racial harassment reported by students who are living Black on campus
• Increased closure of Black faculties, departments and course programmes