Decolonising the Curriculum working group

The Decolonising the Curriculum working group at School of Social Sciences and Global Studies (SSGS) was established in late 2023  by the then teaching director, Matt Staples. The group is co-chaired by Georgina Holmes, Eleni Dimou and Ayobami Ilori. Other members of the working group include  Umut Erel,  Parvati Raghuram, Liz Wright, Claire Malcolm, Charlotte Cross, Charlotte Weatherhill, Paul-Francois Tremlett, Ece Kocabicak, Emil Dauncy, Kathryn Medien, Liudmila Nikanorova, Ling Tang, Gunjan Sondhi, and Mustafa Ali.

The group aims to educate, suggest, advise and offer best practices in the area of decolonising Higher Education and endeavour to engage more people in the School in this process and foster collective involvement.   To achieve these goals, the group has been actively engaging colleagues in the School on the topic of decolonisation, its historical roots, why it matters and how to enrich our curriculum through decolonising lenses.

In July 2024, the Decolonising the Curriculum Working Group organised a one-day hybrid workshop for SSGS colleagues, aimed at bringing together a community and sharing good practice within the school.  The event provided staff with the space and time to share experiences and practical examples to make OU curricula more inclusive by exposing and breaking down raced, gendered and class-based boundaries in knowledge production. Specifically, the workshop had two aims:

• To think through how to decolonise our curricula, while helping students understand why their lived experiences and those of their peers may reflect ongoing colonial structures of power, which are a fundamental part of their learning at the OU.
• To review the progress made within SSGS to diversify our curricula and encourage collaborative learning to date – from initial design through to delivery, reflecting on the experiences of both central lecturers, staff tutors and associate lecturers.

The workshop was attended by 25 participants and financially supported by the Centre for Global Challenges and Social Justice (GCSJ) within SSGS.

In November 2024, the working group chairs facilitated a session at the BoS Active presentation event on decolonising the curriculum and engaging colleagues on best practices across different modules in the school. Also, the group facilitated a Talk Teaching session in the same month, focusing on understanding why curriculum decolonisation matters and how to embed and use diverse decolonial materials in teaching and learning.

At the 2025 Teaching and Learning Festival, the Decolonising the Curriculum working group explored how generative AI (gen AI) entrenches colonialism and neocolonialism, by being informed by colonial frameworks of knowledge and continuous colonising practices embedded in contemporary knowledge production. Discussions highlighted that gen AI perpetuates dominant Western epistemologies normalising neocolonial/neoliberal violence and marginalising voices and lived experiences of communities around the world, including many of our students. Recognising the divisiveness of colonialism participants discussed how module production and teaching teams could empower students' voice and collaboration. Recommendations from that event included:

• Facilitate student critical thinking by emphasising the historical roots and colonising power of gen AI.
• Create a bank of teaching resources about gen AI to challenge (neo)colonial assumptions.
• Use oral assessments to limit gen AI reliance by students.
• Reduce silo practices by sharing good practices and lessons learnt across SSGS.