I am penning this blog in preparation for my participation as a panelist in the online session “Researching on antiracism – the people and the purpose“.
How did you happen into the DEI research/ How & Why did you start your journey into DEI research?
It all started ~17 years ago during the first year of my PhD. There were 3 things that happened at roughly the same time. I stumbled into my first DEI by a mix of being a victim of discrimination, sheer serendipity, and also sheer ignorance of staff.
Disability work – I was awarded a scholarship for my PhD studies, but I somehow never benefited from my full scholarship – there were three int’l non-White girls who were discriminated against, and somehow, I was the one the least supported until the very end of my research studies. I was told if I ever asked for my full scholarship I might be kicked out altogether – at that time there was no place for questioning a White male of course. It meant I had to find some part-time work, and that is how I started to work with disabled students.
We had our first blind student in the Engineering department – mind you that student was constantly being pressured by a few lecturers to change her programme. I started working with that student, and I learnt a bit of braille especially the Maths symbol, which I have altogether forgotten today. Along with the lab technicians, we were coming up with how to get that student to understand Engineering Maths, and Circuit Boards, with zero budget allocated at that time. All the while, my own PhD was into Virtual Reality in a CAVE – so very exclusive of blind people and this made me reflect a lot on my research and my practice. I no more work around AR and VR, if Jaron Lanier can be against certain tech, I can be against what he created, I think he knows too well what he created.
Later, as a staff at a different university, I heard of a rather horrific situation on my first day and jumped on board to support hearing-impaired students and that’s how I started my work with captioning – that was not part of my day-to-day workload, so I was often in the office 5-9pm purely to do what everyone should have had the common sense to do de-facto, given that disability is THE protected ground where you have an anticipatory duty.
Empowering Women – I love attending CPDs, and that’s how I stumbled across the UK Resource Centre for Women in SET, which had its South East hub on campus. I started to volunteer with them, working on projects to encourage STEM for girls in school and projects to get women to come back into the STEM workforce after a career break. One day I was told there is no women’s network in the university, and that’s how I founded the Women in Academia Network.
What a lot of my male ex-peers do not know till now is that I had to change office and building altogether sometime during the 3rd year of my PhD, because of 1) discrimination from them, and 2) their comments about me founding that network.
Internationalisation work – By then I had already been an int’l student in 5 different countries, including the UK, and had a pretty solid first-hand experience of TNE, immigration, and the challenges of int’l students. I remember attending a focus group for int’l students, where a British-born staff was completely ignorant of what being an int’l student meant in the UK. I decided that if I cannot get the support I need from the staff who are meant to support me, well I will do it myself. Before that, I was already very active with Erasmus Mundus & Transnational Education – so that incident fuelled me to get into it in the UK too. Why not?
And the rest is history, I am now Chair of the Antiracism and Learning Technology SIG.
Are there any specific challenges you faced/currently face in your research into DEI? Or at a personal level while researching into DEI?
Definitely many. A few of those challenges meant questioning the status quo which resulted in work contracts not being renewed or having to deal with long HR cases.
1 At a research level – DEI is often about challenging the status quo, so defacto there are challenges. I have been questioned so many times by people who knew less but who have too much ego – there is such a big difference if the question comes from a space of wanting to know more. Interestingly, although we are in the educational sector, not everyone is open to healthy debates. It is slightly more difficult to get truly dedicated collaborators 1) either you stick with the small group of people you usually do research with – which defies the purpose of DEI research, 2) or you have to navigate the intricacies of collaborators with less knowledge, less passion, etc. To give you an example, for antiracism, it means doing research only with people who truly understand antiracism and with the same mindset as yours, or you throw in a few pseudo-antiracists and then have to constantly correct their construed antiracism. I have written about “Navigating racism with pseudo-antiracists” before.
2 At a personal level – When you are doing something great, someone higher up will want to own your ideas, hard work, deliverables, be fearful that you may replace them, etc. I have faced this both as a student and as a staff. In one particular HEI, a new staff reward was introduced and I had bagged rewards for all 4 values. I recall my ex-line manager had a hard time congratulating me for being recognised by colleagues. The sense of insecurity did not stop with that ex-LM but he passed it on to his line manager. I do not need to tell you that the yearly appraisal was tough, I was told no one ever gets the highest score – not sure why the highest score existed then. Interestingly, after I left that HEI, my name was omitted from subsequent publications of research that I started and worked on. That’s how much damage incompetent and insecure people higher up can do. In another institution, another ex-LM did not even get my probation and appraisal done because I had questioned the status quo in that department. Fortunately, SLT was aware of my work, they bypassed the ex-LM and his own LM and overwrote the whole process. It is important to know the procedures in and out and stand up for oneself.
3 At a more holistic level – I will throw in the institutional level and even wider sectorial level. Support is still largely on paper. I will give you a very simple example. For the Aurora programme – a Women’s leadership programme – some universities identify male staff – usually Inclusion Team Lead or a pro-VC to be institutional champions for Aurora. It is like having a White male to champion the Race Equality Charter. Now I am not saying men should not spearhead women empowerment initiatives, but let’s face it, it is like asking a man – born male and who has never had any sex change – to describe period cramps or menopause hot flushes. Not only is that the most ridiculous thing happening in our HEIs in 2024, but staff are not questioning it – it is almost like the female staff or women in leadership in those institutions are stuck in self-doubt and insecurity. If you happen to be working on DEI in such an institution or as in my case have collaborators from such institutions, I am afraid you won’t see much progress – there cannot be any impactful change because the dialogue within those HEIs is one of inadequacy.
There will always be challenges in DEI work. And if you are among the only few walking the talk, you will be seen as alien. It is about building the skill set to stand up for what is ethically right. I do not sugarcoat my words, and I am willing to see my circle decrease in size as long as it increases in value – people who are truly open to a healthy debate on DEI work and research.
How have you gone about generating impact from your DEI research?
I tend to go more in-depth than in-breadth. I believe impact is a wave that does not come from only 1 person but from the many people who have been impacted by that 1 person.
1 I do not go into a project with the sole expectation of creating impact. I go with a bigger purpose, and that fuels me in doing the research around DEI in the first place. And I believe that once I am fulfilling my purpose, well things just happen and impact starts to be felt and sometimes even impact that I would not have imagined.
As Chair of ARLT SIG, I have spent most of my time initially firefighting racist mindsets rather than creating impact. But what is important is to create that wave that others can surf on and create impact.
2 There is one thing that I love to do – write notes, reflect, and improve. I was blissfully unaware of when it was really that I started to create impact. I think the impact started to really amplify when I started to blog.
One thing I had found useful was creative approaches. A few years ago I started to write poems, and I realised that my message was reaching more people than before. I have documented these in my blog space:
- Flashcards to raise digital inequalities awareness in the educational sector – an OER practice for solutions & Embracing creativity and OER for digital equity
- Celebrating World Creativity & Innovation with #creativeHE + Recording
- YOU are forgetting me! Open Mic + Recording
3 In DEI work there is more intangible impact and it is important to understand how to look for impact. I remember last year someone shared, how the HEI they worked at, introduced a support project for students, but closed the whole project down after 2 years. So, practically, they were expecting results in less than 1 year, and sadly that is not how impact always work.
There is also intangible impact in terms of relationships that you build. There are many students that I have worked with who are still in touch with me to date.
Of all your research activities/projects/publications/, which one is the most fulfilling for you? Why?
I will share one tech and one non-tech project:
1 I love the work I do around how internationalisation defines the technology and assessment methods to be used. One piece of work that I did and that gave some food for thought for many people is the “Skip your sleep, it is 23:59 – an ALT 2022 presentation follow-up”.
When I was given this question, there was a note in brackets – my answer does not need to be what I feel the audience would like – that’s the whole point of doing DEI research: presenting alternative viewpoints.
In the West, people tend to like fancy technologies, and surprisingly get easily swayed by anything new, and then tend to impose this across other regions.
2 My preferred line of non-tech-related work is my internationalisation and TNE initiatives. While supporting int’l staff and students, I get to live a bit of their journey and get to know their culture and society better – the opportunities and challenges. It is a really enriching experience. I also do a lot of free mentoring for marginalised students and staff in Africa and Asia, which creates long-lasting relationships.
Thinking specifically of anti-racism, from your experience, what are the challenges of researching antiracism and the intersection between antiracism and learning
technology?
I think a lot of people already aware of the commonly known challenges, I will cover a few less commonly known challenges which are seldom spoken about.
1 Understanding the design and development process – I think it is important to understand the technology development cycle to best understand those challenges.
There are different direct stakeholders involved in communication – usually you would have:
- A client who commissions a piece of product – whether hardware/software, they are the ones with the capital. In an educational context, the client is the SLT team/IT Champion.
- Representatives of the company which has taken the development – someone suited and booted, with a tie.
However, the 2 most important stakeholders are the developers and end users – that is, students/staff using the VLE. Yet, the developers never get to hear directly from the end users.
The company that has been commissioned gets to hear a version of what some people who got educated 30, 40, 50 years ago, and have not brushed up on their pedagogies, telling them what must be developed. How many of those decision-makers have recently spent time being a student on a programme taught on a VLE?
If an antiracist feature were to appear on the VLE when in use, who would you blame? The SLT member who comes from an era of mostly conservative perspective, the developers, the administrative staff at the institution? The UK is known for a few popular failed systems after all.
2 Understanding where your platform comes from and its impact – There is a reason why the US is a superpower, and it will remain topmost for a good while. In fact, it is a universal empire, most of the World is under the US hegemony, mainly because it has developed this master-slave strategy when it comes to technology in every field, and of course, education being one of them.
ChatGPT, the most recent hype, is owned by OpenAI, which sits in the USA, and I am pretty sure people in attendance today are aware of various examples of ChatGPT biases. However, not everyone may be aware of the issues beyond that. For example, let’s say from a geopolitical perspective and the role that the US plays in technology, politics, and the world economy. Irrespective of whether you love or hate China’s political ideologies. you probably will see sense in Fudan University’s development of MOSS which is its own ChatGPT-like service.
ChatGPT has both free and paid versions which is the upgraded version – I think the pandemic taught – those who did not know yet – enough about digital poverty. I can go on and on with ChatGPT alone, and there will be more and more people upset especially if I elaborate on the disservice to disabled people. YES, there are several short-term benefits of ChatGPT and AI, and NO, I am not against technology, what I am against is people with limited knowledge rushing into things, because the long-term issues are all man-made, and most people do not seem to learn from patterns. “Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse” ~ Sophocles
If you take the VLE for example, I think WOLF was the first VLE developed in the UK, that’s in 1999, which was later replaced by Canvas. When I was working at UoW, both were in use. It was interesting – teaching was done on Canvas, while things like program validation and a few processes were still on WOLF. Bear in mind, there was a petition out to save WOLF. When it comes to tackling social problems, there need to be localised solutions. And I think the disconnect between learning technologists/learning designers, etc, and developers in some way prevents antiracism from being tackled.
3 Misusing features – There was a time when things gamification was the hype, it still is for those who have specialised in it. Gamification on VLEs has more flip sides in the long run. I am currently taking a course where gamification has taken a completely negative turn, as a result I am hardly checking any comments, so will most likely miss on positive and useful comments as well.
Another example within the HE context is the “upvote” and “downvote” feature on some VLEs is not conductive at all to an inclusive learning environment. If a student was to make a comment which is different from their peers, and get downvoted once it is fine. But can you imagine being downvoted every time for sharing perspectives that differ from your peers? We know British HEIs do not have the human resources to read every comment on the VLE forums.
Ethics is not a well understood concept, and ethical design is way lesser understood. There is a complete disconnect between those who truely know and those who are “pushing” for learning technologies in HEIs. This will be unpopular but nonetheless remains true, not all learning technologists/designers, etc have a 360-degree understanding of technology.
Side note – If you have not yet watched “The Social Dilemma”, it is a good investment of your time (here is the link to watching it for free).
4 Is your platform inclusive? I mentioned earlier about imposing learning technologies into other regions. The same way that the US imposes its technologies, including its learning technologies, the UK is also very good at imposing its understanding and very biased view of technology in ex-British colonies.
There is also a refusal to adopt alternatives that work in a wider world context especially when working on collaborative projects. I will give you a few examples to clarify all these points together.
During the pandemic, many HEIs were running after Teams. That was one of the worst software to be used in terms of bandwidth, features, etc. I recall being back in Mauritius during the second part of the pandemic, and it was a nightmare. People did not want to accommodate alternatives like Google Meet that were better in terms of bandwidth. I know so many students who 1) had to turn up online during the class session and 2) could hardly hear anything and had to catch up with recordings.
One other example – BlackBoard Collaborate – which is used to deliver all our ARLT SIG sessions. Every time we have speakers, we have to do a test session with them, because the platform does not allow you to blur your background or apply effects. People have biases and assumptions – one is that everyone owns a big house, with a separate office area, nicely decorated, and maybe with some odd books in the background to seem well-read. Anyone working with the marginalised at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder will tell you that people there hide, yes they hide, because of the humiliation they are prone to receive if they were to be authentic and show you the real environment where they are studying/working.
There is also this belief that technology has to be expensive and shiny. Ask anyone in rural Africa or rural Asia, many educators still heavily use WhatsApp, and it is working efficiently for education and even to manage large projects. That’s also where the most resilient young scientists are from.
I have written a few things about antiracism and technology like “Race equality in learning technology – digital poverty” and check my blogspace for more.
For anyone wanting to start their journey into antiracism and/or DEI research, what would be your advice for them?
Not really advice, but I will share the least-commonly-spoken-about lessons I have learnt over the years.
Researchers come into DEI for various reasons – they come into DEI research for one or various reasons – whether this could be because it is the hype at the moment, or it is where the funds are, or because of their own lived experience or the lived experience of loved ones. On the other side, I have worked with people on disability projects who have never worked with a single disabled staff or student, they were good at reading, referencing, etc, I mean there is only breadth in such research, but no depth. Likewise, I have on antiracism projects with people from very affluent families and great connections.
All researchers have their own biases and framing as well. For example, not everything is about racism or any of the -ism you want to categorise a situation that you seem to be offended by. For example, last year when the Black Tiktoker who was making a prank of walking into random houses went viral, a lot of antiracist activists were first to jump on their Social Media to shout racism, then later retracted their posts. When working on DEI we all have a responsibility towards those who are following our content. There are many DEI researchers, lawyers, activists who are not acting responsibly.
There are many educators around the world who are being bullied and threatened because of such things happening – something that made the buzz in the world few years back was the death of Samuel Paty (you can watch a more recent documentary – not sure if there is an equivalent English version with full details).
“Hurt people hurt others – healed people heal others”
Few days back, I had to mute certain keywords on my Social Media, mainly because of how the edited photos of Princess of Wales was being scrutinised by some pseudo-antiracists. This needs to be said out loud – not everything is about racism. People are channeling their dislikes on Social Media in the wrong way.
There is another example, which I shared last year during the ALT conference presentation – check the recording. I highlighted a case where a DEI lawyer sitting in Oxford, commented on how beautiful the pictures were, on a video which was about Black discrimination in Latin America. He shifted responsibility on the Black person in Latin America to put captions for him to consume the material, and at no point in time blamed the platform that did not have embedded captions, and nor did he ask for captions. Because something is a law in the UK, you cannot expect it to be the law in another country or another part of the World. The situation ended with 2 Black women apologising to a deaf White male lawyer sitting in the UK.
I will give you another example closer to me, which a few of you in the audience today might be aware of. I wrote a blog about 2 years ago about what my name means – I wrote it because of a few people in my circle who apparently do “antiracism” works, but who would not bother to pronounce my name well – not because they could not, but because they are not bothered. Should I be the one correcting that person – NO – and period.
During my January presentation at BETT, I covered how no one is really an expert in DEI, sadly sessions were not recorded. When it comes to antiracism, let’s not forget, that there were our very own people who were facilitators to colonialism. In India there was a caste system pre-colonial, in several African countries, there was already a slavery system pre-colonial. “The Shocking Truth About Nigeria’s Slave Trade History!“. The last person who did not pay me what I am worth is a POC, the last person who bullied me is a POC, the last person who did not have my back is a POC.
With DEI, when you fail, get back up, and take another route. You could definitely refer to literature, but I take literature with a pinch of salt nowadays. Recently, I reviewed a paper where the authors with over-rated claims when only a handful of people participated in their survey.
Using a specific example, what does your ideal antiracist institution look like?
There is NO ideal antiracist institution, and a close-to-ideal institution will definitely not happen in the UK.
The issue is in the very social fabric of the UK. One thing we need to be aware of is that the winners of wars write history. And all the current wars are rewriting history. Churchill killed more people than Stalin, or even Hitler but it is a part of history that is hidden.
Let me share with you something within the British academic world. About 6 months ago, Rashmi Samant, launched her book “A Hindu in Oxford”, she was the first Hindu President of the Oxford Students – a group that you would believe to be independent of staff interference. She was targetted by a staff, who went on a witch hunt on her social media account targeting her, her parents, her religion, and her previous institution, with fake stories. Read the book, and you will get the truth that could not be told on British soil. In the end, a group of academics at Oxford – the media called them “dons” – demanded changes to the social media policy – the academic who went on to attack that female student on social media was getting a taste of his own medicine on social media by the general public. Now bear in mind, that said academic had also made misogynistic comments in response to an actress who commented about how a few men had flashed their genitals at her, and that academic response was “What did you do with their genitals when they showed it to you according to you?”. When I last checked, that academic was still in post.
The reason why I have explained this particular example in so much detail, is because HEI staff are meant to have a duty of care towards students, and I can go on with many more horrible examples which I have personally had, or students have come to me crying because staff have humiliated part of their identity in public.
One important thing I would like to highlight – because you are not hearing of these stories does not mean that they are not happening. It means you need to get more deeply involved and hear those stories.
I am blessed that I am a polyglot and can source information from several languages and I am able to make sense to all the twisted information that gets fed to us.
For those who speak only English, here is a story more relatable. Only last week, Dianne Abbott stood up in the House of Commons a total of 46 times to be able to share her take during the conversation about the racism and sexism that SHE had suffered. For 46 times she was ignored. That’s in the House of Commons, and that is a common occurrence in HEIs and in the society too.
There could be one thing that I think British HEIs could do to move towards an antiracist agenda. It is a simple concept commonly used in businesses:
Committment by HEIs + Consistency by the regulators + Capital (access to the resources) + Commitment from the staff = Delivery
Now bear in mind, I said to move towards an antiracist agenda, but I did not say reach that agenda, and the reason being the social fabric of England does not allow you to do so. I am talking of a complete polar opposite moving from “talking” or “bluffing” to “actioning”.
Post edit: Recording of panel discussion
Impact Coaching & Mentoring (ICM) for Leaders 