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Find details of our events, training sessions, and catch up with recordings. Our events are aimed at both UCL staff and students, and external stakeholders
Upcoming events
Our event schedule for 2024/25 is being finalised. If you would like to hear about upcoming events, please sign up to our network.
Confronting eugenics legacies worldwide with student scholarship, 25 January 2025, 4–5:30pm.
Past events
- Reparative futures of education - Prof Arathi Sriprakash
In this session, we explore how the idea of reparation can help address the injustices of education systems, in particular the legacies of eugenics in universities such as UCL.
The idea of reparation requires us to understand the interconnections between past, present, and future in both the formation of injustice and its repair. It implies that until injustices are actively addressed they can endure in social institutions – such as universities – which also shape lives to come.
In this workshop we discuss, material, epistemicand pedagogic dimensions of reparation to create a more just future of education.
Professor Arathi Sriprakash is Professor of Education at University of Bristol. She is the co-author of 'Learning Whiteness: Education and the Settler Colonial State' and co-director of the Centre for Comparative and International Research in Education. She is a recipient of an ERC Consolidator Grant for her project RepairEd: Reparative Futures of Education which will look at identifying and redressing educational injustices.
Download the presentation slides [PDF]
Download the event transcript [PDF]
Watch the recording below:
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- Curating content: tackling difficult topics in the age of activism - Prof Alice Stevenson
This event looks at the challenges of tackling difficult topics in higher education curriculums from the perspective of a UCL Museum Studies professor.
As teachers in Higher Education, we are often assumed to be experts in our field. But when the social and political contexts of that field profoundly shift it can leave us feeling uncertain and uncomfortable.
Decolonisation of disciplines has swept across institutions in what is an intensified cultural moment of political action and redress based upon decades of Indigenous peoples’ and civil-rights activism. Our own education and experiences may leave us feeling ill equipped to address the wide-ranging implications of these movements, even as we strive for more ethical and equitable pedagogies.
In this session, Professor Stevenson talks through her experience of teaching Museum Studies, the curriculum for which has had to radically change over the last six years to reflect a rapidly changing sector. The event is introduced by Helen Knowler, associate professor (education) at the UCL Arena Centre.
Watch the recording below:
Local Media Widget Placeholderhttps://mediacentral.ucl.ac.uk/Play/103609
- Determining biological citizenship: Creating and effacing difference in Puerto Rico’s education - Dr Bethsaida Nieves
Dr Nieves' work analyses the ways in which institutional practices gave legitimacy to conceptualisations of difference in Puerto Rico’s schooling and society. She examines the ways in which discourses of difference provided educators with information about whom the Puerto Rican child was or could become. These epistemological and ontological reference points shifted under the first years of civil colonial rule, which constructed a state of liminal governmentality in Puerto Rico’s education and society. For Puerto Rico’s case, sustained avoidance became a tactic for governing, which has kept Puerto Rico in a state of suspended sovereignty since the turn of the twentieth century.
Dr Nieves obtained her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Nieves’ specialty is analysing the systems of reason(ing) and the intersectionalities that produce knowledge, power, and difference in education and society. She delivered this research seminar in November 2023 as part of her visit to UCL’s arranged with ELEP.
Watch the recording on MediaCentral.
MediaCentral Widget Placeholderhttps://mediacentral.ucl.ac.uk/Player/9B3hDbBG
- Integrating teaching on ‘sensitive’ topics into your lessons - Dr Jayne Kavanagh
Dr Jayne Kavanagh draws on her ten years’ experience of facilitating UCL medical student sessions on so called ‘sensitive’ topics – abortion, FGM and domestic abuse – to open up discussion on integrating teaching on ‘sensitive’ topics into the curriculum.
Watch the recording of Jayne's event on MediaCentral.
MediaCentral Widget Placeholderhttps://mediacentral.ucl.ac.uk/Player/bE1FFa17
- Towards a pedagogy for difficult histories: Insights from Holocaust education - Andy Pearce
Watch the recording of Andy's talk on Media Central.
MediaCentral Widget Placeholderhttps://mediacentral.ucl.ac.uk/Player/D97497I4
- Exploring contested histories using collaboration and citizens' assemblies - Caitlin Kight and Eleanor Harding
This online interactive workshop in July 2024 explored the value of citizens’ assembly approaches in discussing significance – of heritage assets, relating to difficult histories. This framework can be used to present 'sensitive or potentially upsetting topics' in a variety of teaching settings.
Training in how to teach 'difficult' topics
In 2024/25 we are delivering two sessions written by Helen Knowler, ELEP's academic lead.
A recording of a 30-minute whistlestop tour of the topic is available below if you would like an introduction to the area and if you'd like a supersonic introduction, Helen recorded a 90 second Micro CPD on this topic! The workshops are currently for UCL colleagues only.
- Preparing to teach difficult and/or sensitive topics in Higher Education: Theory into practice. A 90-minute online interactive workshop critically exploring theories and frameworks for teaching. The next session is scheduled to take place remotely on Wednesday 6th November 2024 (10:00-11:30).
- Leading on teaching difficult and/or sensitive topics in higher education. A three-hour face-to-face session exploring the implications of leading on teaching and learning activities. The next session is scheduled to take place on the Bloomsbury campus on Thursday 28th November 2024 (13:00-16:00). This will be co-facilitated by Professor Alice Stevenson and Helen Knowler, with input from Dr Jayne Kavanagh.
Later iterations of these sessions can also be booked. Simply open one of the above courses, choose 'book now' and all available sessions will be visible.
If you are interested in ELEP delivering bespoke training to your team, please contact us (elep@ucl.ac.uk).
- Teaching difficult and/or sensitive topics: Three starting points
Helen Knowler explores some of the challenges and opportunities for educators when planning to teach difficult and/or sensitive topics in higher education.
MediaCentral Widget Placeholderhttps://mediacentral.ucl.ac.uk/Player/Ij1BHCHi