Keynote Lecture - Professor Heidi Safia Mirza

“One in a Million”: Stories of solidarity, survival, and success inside the Ivory Tower

Professor Heidi Safia Mirza

How do we survive and thrive within the ‘Ivory Towers” of higher education in these confusing neo-liberal, so-called post-race and post-feminist times? To answer this crucial question this keynote lecture draws on my own experience as the “One in a Million” Black Feminist professor who has survived over 40 years in the unsafe space of patriarchal whiteness, that is British higher education. Drawing on my intersectional research on working class Muslim, Black and Asian postgraduate students I reflect on lessons learnt and share with you my pragmatic secrets of success. I conclude by asking how we confront and dismantle the embedded sexism and racism in our elite places of teaching and learning so we can survive and thrive and truly decolonise our institutions of higher learning from the ‘inside out’, not only for our wellbeing, but for generations to follow.

Heidi Safia Mirza is Emeritus Professor of Equality Studies in Education at UCL Institute of Education and Visiting Professor of Race, Faith and Culture at Goldsmith’s College and Race Policy at LSE. She is known for her pioneering intersectional research on race, gender and identity in education and has an international reputation for championing equality and human rights for Black, Muslim, Asian women, and young people through educational reform. A daughter of the Windrush generation from Trinidad and schooled in Brixton, Heidi is one of the first and rare 35 ‘Phenomenal Women’ Black Women professors in Britain. She is author of several best-selling books including Black British Feminism and Young Female and Black, which was voted in the top 40 most influential educational studies in Britain. Professor Mirza is a leading voice in the global debate on decolonisation and co-edited the flagship book, ‘Dismantling Race in Higher Education: Racism, whiteness and decolonising the academy’. She currently leads the IFS Deaton Race and Ethnic Inequalities Review which includes the impact of COVID-19 on Black and minority ethnic communities.

The event will be followed by a reception in the Cinema Bar.

To find out more about other events happening as part of the University of Westminster Graduate School Festival visit: http://blog.westminster.ac.uk/graduateschoolfestival

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Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Regent Street Cinema, 307 Regent Street, London, United Kingdom