Decolonising Part 1: The UKRI studies costing British taxpayers over £9 million
£9,283,047 has been spent on the following ten research projects
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Today The Telegraph published my piece on a taxpayer-funded research project that aims to “decolonise” folk singing (I have encompassed the funding into this article).
Over the last month I have been going through every project that relates to the word “decolonise”. I regret to tell you that there are a lot:
I’ve also kindly had help from a member of the Awoken community, who has exported this list, which will make my life way easier:
It gives you an idea of the scale of the problem, and how bonkers some of these studies are, such as the studentship (usually a PhD) in “Becoming Korean: K-pop idol culture and the rise of soft power in Iran”.
Anyway, apologies in advance for the Woke Waste you are about to encounter, which adds up to just over £9 million in taxpayer funding.
£1,183,769
The Cultural Legacies of the British Empire: Classical Music's Colonial History (1750-1900)
“The Black Lives Matter movement sparked fervent debate among the British public about how to come to terms with the cultural legacies of empire, but discussions have largely focussed on statues, paintings, and the built environment. The colonial underpinnings of Classical music have not been scrutinised in the same way.”
£802,442
Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1830s to the present
“In collaboration with the British Library, it will provide key tools for teachers and schoolchildren, as well as members of the public, to understand and explore British history and contemporary culture as inclusive of and shaped by its South Asian inhabitants, citizens and communities. Crucially, the project will deepen and complicate contemporary public debates on belonging and home, and help to remake ideas of Britain and Britishness.”
£1,327,278
£1,510,011 (nb. the total calculation can be found on a different page, not below where it says £1,188,320)
Defining Ethnomusicological Action Research through the regeneration of folk singing in England
£1,997,694
Decolonising Peace Education In Africa
“The project will deliver at least 9 journal articles, 4 co-edited special issues of journals and an interdisciplinary edited book. In addition, the outputs from the arts and humanities methods will be showcased through exhibitions, performances and workshops. The project will also create a visible network of researchers, policy-makers and community organisations that work together to offer new meaningful knowledges, pedagogies and teaching materials for a decolonised peace education”.
£939,368
“Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) within Higher Education (HE) is a global problem that requires urgent attention. Keeping ideas of prevention and change of culture at its core, the proposed research will decolonise understandings of SGBV in HE by focusing on lessons from institutional practices and feminist struggles in the Global South.”
£809,334
“Given that educational institutions throughout the world are actively engaged in decolonising their curricula, Stevenson's work and legacy present a particularly valuable focus of inquiry. Stevenson became actively involved in supporting Samoan and Hawaiian indigenous sovereignty movements at a crucial period just before these islands were annexed by the US and Germany, and yet his Pacific fiction, while iconoclastic in featuring indigenous protagonists with considerable agency and dignity, and offering a critical proto-modernist perspective on western imperialism, still upholds many of the colonial stereotypes typical of fin-de-siecle western literature.”
£310,724
“Coloniality is structured by a hierarchy of knowers, knowing and knowledge that violently denigrates Indigenous ways of being in the world. This hierarchy is premised on a figure-cum-standard of the 'human' as one who is separate from flesh, past and cosmos. Countering it therefore requires counter-practices that open-up multiple other forms of being human - including in research, which largely assumes and reproduces the colonial figure of the human even when done in the name of 'decolonisation'.”
£200,462
Decolonising the Page: The Visual Politics and Poetics of Postcolonial Arabic Publications
“It is the project's central contention that this rich archive enables us to recover a suppressed history and heritage of Arab decolonisation processes; one that takes on board the postcolonial imagination, aesthetic preoccupations and political contestations of Arab artists and designers of this generation. In doing so, 'Decolonising the Page' contributes to understanding histories of decolonisation: its thwarted projects and unfinished legacies resonate in renewed decolonial endeavours and solidarity projects today.”
£201,965
Stolen archives? Re-evaluating the British 'migrated' archives and decolonisation
“The 'migrated' archives story is also rarely taught in British secondary schools, despite its importance in understanding decolonisation and its legacies for contemporary Britain. The project will facilitate the co-creation of new teaching resources for schools about the 'migrated' archives. A-level students will work as 'interns' on the project, collaborating with Northumbria University student mentors and school teachers to analyse 'migrated' documents. The project will co-create teaching resources that will generate new conversations among young people about decolonisation.”
Similar/ related pieces:
How do you 'decolonise' something?
During my trawls of UKRI funding grants, I’ve noticed that the word “decolonise”/ “decolonising” comes up A LOT. Search for “decolonise” and 997 projects are found, 366 are “active” - in other words, going on right now. A caveat: not every one of these results is about “decolonise” in the “British Colonial Rule” sense. For instance this one:
“Decolonise” is just the latest fashionable buzzword to be added to the pile that get you to the front of the funding queue. Chuck “intersectional” into the mix and you’ll have the social science PhD funding bodies falling over themselves with public largesse.
I have a simple view of this stuff. If you want to “study” (I use the term loosely) it and write some pretentious paper or book, then be my guest; but don’t expect me or any other taxpayer to contribute one penny to your hobby. Raise the money yourself from voluntary donors.