Abstract

Over the past years there have been conversations around decolonising Higher Education which have tended to focus on social science. We wanted to understand the type of impact decolonising initiatives were having in more science-based disciplines such as physical geography and environmental sciences. We carried out an online survey which received over 100 responses from the Faculty of Environment at the University of Leeds. We have written a report based on the survey results which you can access here. Our findings show there is reluctance to acknowledge how research is influenced by ongoing colonial relations. A high percentage of respondents felt decolonisation didn’t apply to their disciplines because of the nature of them which involve a “rigorous” scientific process. They argued decolonisation did not need to happen in their field given they focus on experiments, working in labs and/or with inanimate objects versus human relations. During this seminar, we will explore in detail these challenges as well as recommendations in thinking how we can overcome these obstacles in decolonising our teaching and research.