The Faculty is committed to race equality and confronting racism. It is determined to foster an academic environment in which everyone is included, respected and empowered to fulfil their potential.
The Faculty pursues these objectives in a number of ways:
- Over the course of 2020-22, a Race Equality Action Group (REAG) undertook a systematic project of data collection, listening and research, in order to develop and embed anti-racist policies and practices. These focused on Recruitment and Staff Experience, Admissions and Student Experience, Research and Curriculum. Alongside this, the REAG organised a programme of internal and public events to underline the importance of research on the histories of race and raced experience.
- Alongside the REAG, a Race Equality Working Group (REWG) – comprising undergraduate, graduate, ECR, staff and Faculty representatives – meets termly and reports to the Equality and Diversity Committee and presents proposals to the Faculty Board. The REWG continues the work of the REAG, utilising its findings and implementing its recommendations.
- The Faculty aims to promote greater clarity on harassment and complaint procedures.
- We work to enhance our appeal to Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic applicants at undergraduate and graduate level, as well as in recruiting academic staff.
- We support students and staff from under-represented backgrounds through all stages of the academic pipeline.
- We introduce measures to increase the inclusivity of research seminars, and encouraging all staff to undertake training on tackling race bias at work.
- The Faculty also continues to diversify the curriculum at both undergraduate and graduate levels, with the aim of increasing the number of courses concerned with Asian, African, South American and Black British history, and promotes the study of the Global South more broadly. In addition, we seek to introduce students to a range of historical approaches beyond those dominant in the European historical tradition.
Note on language: the History Faculty follows the recommendation of the REAG in noting that categories of racial and ethnic identity are blunt and present difficulties of use and interpretation, but that where an overarching category is needed, the preference will be for ‘Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic’ (avoiding the use of the acronym as much as possible). This terminology was felt to highlight in a useful way the specificity of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic experience in Britain and its relationship to the imperial historical context; it can also be readily related to existing statistical data. The Faculty further notes the specificity of racialisation in Britain and its intersections with class, the ways in which the raced identities of international students might emerge from very different contexts, and recognises that individuals may often choose to describe themselves using other terms.
