Decolonising the School of Law

A dedicated Decolonising the School of Law Forum was set up at the start of Session 23-24 with the intention of bringing together staff and students to lead reflection and action in the School around anti-racism. We are committed to understanding better ‘who we are’ and ‘what we do’ in our School so that we can welcome, include and engage with a diverse student and staff body, and deliver a legal education that is inclusive and reflects the rich diversity of law, legal thinking and pedagogy. This work is slow work; if this is to be more than window dressing, at the heart of it lies culture change.    

This work is set within a wider University context.  One action in the Understanding Racism, Transforming University Cultures Action Plan published by the University in 2021 was to ‘build a strand on decolonising the curriculum into the next L&T strategy’ – it being recognised that there was ‘the need to develop a curriculum which is globally reflective, to ensure all students can engage fully in the learning experience.’  One of the internal drivers identified in the University’s 2021-25 L&T strategy talks to the need to ensure learning and teaching is inclusive and that policies and practices support student wellbeing and inclusion.  

Mission statement

The pervasiveness of Western sources of knowledge as our ‘common knowledge’, has created stubborn and enduring structural inequalities and racial injustice in our higher education establishments.  In the context of our School of Law, we believe in the need to identify the harmful legacies of our colonial history, and challenge the systems, relationships and structures that sustain them.   We recognise the law’s dual role as both a contributor to inequality through the maintenance of unequal power relations and as part of the solution to achieving a more equal, inclusive and diverse society.         

In the School of Law, we are committed to a sustained and collaborative examination of our teaching materials, pedagogies, community and practices to ensure:

  • Our curriculum and teaching in the School - across all programmes – better acknowledge a diversity of cultures, philosophies and knowledge systems; concerned not only by what is taught and how it is critiqued, but also by how it is taught and experienced.
  • all present and future staff and students can flourish in an environment, which is inclusive, safe, and (more) diverse; underpinned by a culture of dignity and respect.

We will through this endeavour stimulate the re-discovery of supressed forms of knowledge, identify and challenge the ways in which the School and University structurally reproduces colonial hierarchies and promote sustained culture change.  

We are dedicated to this work, which will be active, intentional, non-hierarchical, enabling and collaborative (between staff and students; and between those with lived experience and allies).   We will generate and compile resources to support change.  We will create space for dialogue and for listening.  We accept the need to be open to un-learning and re-learning and we acknowledge the discomfort this will involve.  

Forum members

Staff: Maria Fletcher, Catriona Cannon, David Boag, Cameron Wong-McDermott, Rebecca Williams, Rebecca Sutton, Joyman Lee, Gigi Jokubauskaite, Andrea Varga, Sarah Dean

Student members: Amelia Lockhart-Hourigan, Arianna Ahrens, Lucy Bowie, Ameerah Adetoro, Sam Viju, Zoe Millar, Wabia Nganatha Karugu, Aliyah Muhammed, Joséphine Sangaré, Theresa Sebastian

If you are interested in the work of the forum or would like to find out more about joining this space, please contact Maria Fletcher (maria.fletcher@glasgow.ac.uk) or Catriona Cannon (catriona.cannon@glasgow.ac.uk).      

 

 

Events

Forum members attended on a ‘field trip’ to The Hunterian in February 2024 to learn from the University’s Ms Zandra Yeoman, Curator of Unfinished Conversations, on a project entitled ‘Curating Discomfort’ which is designed to aid understanding of the role of museums in reinforcing ideologies of white supremacy.      

Dr Rebecca Sutton and PGT student Wabia Nganatha Karugu hosted a staff-student Winter Board Game Night in February 2024. With hot chocolate and cake, this game night engaged staff and students from the law school in playing "Brave New World'' - a human rights board game designed by scholars at Nottingham Trent University. The game immerses players in an unequal world in which goblins of various characteristics have different chances to achieve happiness. We used game play to generate an informal chat about fostering equality within the School of Law.