Decolonising the curriculum: students’ perspectives in criminology

Building on the recent intensified calls to decolonise the curriculum in higher education in the UK and beyond, and on my modest initiatives amongst some colleagues, this paper explores the impact of the dominant Eurocentric curriculum on minoritised ethnic students, and their perspectives of our decolonising initiatives, with the aim of refining them. To do so, I exercise ‘affective awareness’, and ‘decolonial reflexivity’, working with my discomforts whilst engaging with 10 minoritised ethnic students in criminology purposively selected to participate in semi-structured interviews after completing self-administered questionnaires. Based on the findings of this work, I argue that for ‘decolonising the curriculum’ beyond the box-ticking exercise, it should involve more than broadening the canon and revising reading lists. It should engage in an uncomfortable unpacking of asymmetrical power relationships and a shift in the practices of knowledge production, in ways that include the students’ perspective more closely.