The Faculty of Arts and Humanities and is committed to decolonisation, which we recognise as a complex and multifaceted process that includes education, research, departmental culture, outreach and student support.
History
Decolonising History web page
Philosophy
EDI and Decolonisation web page
Internal Philosophy EDI page, including decolonisation
Access for current students and members of staff only.
Decolonising MLaC Research Group
Decolonising the classics and ancient history curriculum: towards new horizons. Examining the current curriculum revealed a main issue: almost all of the modules which are currently available study either Ancient Rome or Ancient Greece. Other ancient civilisations are rarely looked at, and often only in relation to Greece and Rome.
Decolonising the classics andancient history curriculum:towards new horizons
Decolonising the curriculum: Diversifying the scholarship. The goal of this project was to increase the diversity of the 'Traditions of Epic' reading list.
Decolonising the curriculum: Diversifying the scholarship
The linguistic and cultural heritage of the Punic people, focussing on how their Semitic language and maritime trade practices influenced Mediterranean civilizations.
Classics Project Poster
English
An introduction to decolonising our thinking in English literature. The motivation behind this guide came from our consideration of what exactly we mean when we say ‘decolonising’. The term itself is predisposed to viewing decolonisation as a goal rather than an ongoing process.
An introduction to decolonising our thinking in English literature.
Supplementing the central library’s decolonisation toolkit specifically for the English Department.
English Project Poster
Utilising material culture to diversify perspectives: This project aims to explain why it is valuable for the purpose ofdecolonisation to implement object handling and a focus on non-textual forms of evidence for the testimonies of marginalised groups.
Decolonising History: Utilising material culture to diversify perspectives
Decolonising the Medieval: a comparative study of medieval modules at a first-year university level. This project aims to examine how the History Department at Durham University might further revise its curriculum to decolonise the medieval content offered at the introductory level.
Decolonising the Medieval: a comparative study of medieval modules at a first-year university level.
Developing a guidebook when engaging with GRT (Gypsy, Roma and Traveller) community history.
Back issues of Durham’s student newspaper The Palatinate, analysing the experience of black students in Durham in the twentieth century.
History Project Poster
School of Modern Languages and Cultures (MLaC)
Translation as Appropriation? Silencing Non-European Perspectives: A translation from an article from Spanish to English. This poster outlines the concerns the article notes when engaging with Western or ‘universal’ theories, and the reflections on language and positionality during the translation process.
Translation as Appropriation
Translating Power: Language, Legitimacy, and Francophone Voices: This project proposes the creation of a student-facing translation activity for the Year 1A core French module, designed to encourage critical reflection on the relationship between language, power, and colonial legacies, using extracts from diverse Francophone cultural texts including music, film, and literature.
Translating Power: Language, Legitimacy, and Francophone Voices.
Exploring visual culture and the linguistic representation of objects in museums, comparing the descriptions used in French, Spanish, and English.
MLaC Project Poster
Analysing heritage and community languages, and how the terms are used negatively to develop language hierarchies between commonly taught and lesser-taught languages.
Music
Global Perceptions of National Style in Taiwanese Music: Colonialism has had an inherent impact on the development of cultures, and within that, imposed specific musical traditions and narratives, which is highlighted by the case of Taiwan.
Global Perceptions of National Style in Taiwanese Music
The broad focus is to explore the phase before music students arrive at Durham, analysing the knowledge gatekeepers of music, such as exam boards which grade music levels and hence regulate the transition to university. One project explores the colonial histories of exam boards, and the other looks at how Durham University adapts to address these legacies in terms of student applications and transitions to university.
Music Project Poster
Theology and Religion
A Study the construction of “otherness” across Abrahamic religions (e.g., Orientalism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia) to critically examine how Christian theological frameworks and Western scholarship have historically constructed Judaismand Islam as religious “others,” with a focus on how Orientalism, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia became embedded in theological, academic, and colonial discourse.
A Study the construction of “otherness” across Abrahamic religions (e.g., Orientalism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia)
Colonial Materiality and Durham City’s Theological Past: Theology as a discipline remains impeded by its epistemological and ontological silencing of non-white perspectives.Interrogating the coloniality of local Christian material artefacts provides one opportunity to challenge such elisions in the curriculum.
Colonial Materiality and Durham City’s Theological Past
An exploration into the historical and contemporary ties between secularisation and colonialism.
Theology Project Poster
Re-imagining Knowledge and Reality: Philosophy, as traditionally taught and studied, has been historically shaped by Eurocentric frameworks that assert the discipline’s origins and authority primarily within Western, particularly European, intellectual traditions. This framing not only privileges white, male, bourgeois, and heteronormative perspectives but also marginalises the rich and diverse philosophical contributions from African, Indigenous, Asian, and Latin American traditions.
Decolonising Philosophy: Re-imagining Knowledge and Reality
Decolonising the curriculum: Several thinkers on the philosophy curriculum are proponents of philosophies that are antithetical to the decolonial project, or hold personal views which lecturers and students ought to be aware of when proceeding to teach and/or study them.
MLaC Project Poster 1
MLaC Project Poster 2
Decolonising the classics and ancient history curriculum towards new horizons.
Diversifying the scholarship.
Decolonising the medieval.
Decolonising history.
Translating power: Language, Legitimacy, and Francophone Voices.
Global perceptions of national style in Taiwanese music.
Decolonising philosophy re-imagining knowledge and reality.
Decolonising philosophy.
A study of the construction of “otherness” across Abrahamic religions.
Colonial Materiality and Durham City's Theological Past.
Translation as appropriation.
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