Equality, diversity, inclusion and intersectionality events

On Monday 17 June 2024, IGP’s Citizen Science Academy launched its public exhibition in UCL East’s Marshgate. The exhibition showcases a variety of the ongoing research outputs by the academy’s citizen scientists, particularly across the four boroughs which hosted the Olympic Games in 2012. The exhibit questions whether the Games brought prosperity to local people across these boroughs, posing queries about 2012’s legacy, and definitions of prosperity and the ‘good life’.

As part of IGP’s Alumni Day celebrations, a group of students, alumni, and staff were led on a guided tour by IGP colleagues and co-curators, Joseph Cook, and Citizen Scientist, Twinkle Jayakumar.

Joseph and Twinkle told the group all about the ongoing projects taking place not only around the UK, but around the world, highlighting work in Lebanon and Tanzania. The tour group were introduced to current London-based Citizen Scientists, including three members from North Kensington. Students and staff were interested to learn that Kensington, so often considered a wealthy borough, is surprisingly economically varied. Ongoing projects in the area included:

• An exploration of mental health among Muslim women, following the Grenfell Tower tragedy
• A deep dive into the distribution of skills and learning opportunities around Kensington.
• An investigation into the provision of locally funded mental health support for young people.

The Citizen Scientists noted the recurring theme of the distribution of resources throughout the borough being uneven.

Finally, Joseph informed the group about new, upcoming projects for the Citizen Science Academy, including a collaboration with Environmental Science departments, which would allow Citizen Scientists, who are extremely familiar with the local area, to carry out river monitoring. A very topical and relevant area which we look forward to learning more about!

The Takhayyul ERC project is a decolonizing project that aims to ethnographically excavate the imaginative forces of populist politics in the Balkans, the Middle East, and South Asia. Led by IGP Research Fellow, Dr Sertaç Sehlikoglu, the project also explores how imagination is utilized to reinforce or challenge unequal social and historical relations based on religion, ethnicity, race, class, status, gender, and sexuality. 

On 18th May 2024, the project held a conference called Alternative Imaginaries: Feminist Transformative Politics in the Global South. The event was  organized to examine the ways in which feminist imagination is changing the face of the Global South by challenging gendered political structures, legal systems, and development trajectories in the Global South. The event included an introductory conversation into feminist futures, a look at the politics of intimacy (gender, law, and the perpetuation of inequality), subaltern forms of feminist resistance, and ended with a roundtable discussion between participating speakers.

As part of the IGP’s ongoing commitment to decolonising the curriculum, Dr Hanna Baumann has curated a series of talks called Decolonising Knowledge Production at the IGP. The first session, held on 7th March 2024 saw Dr Carolina Alves, associate professor in economics from UCL’s Institute of Innovation and Public Policy, give a talk on decolonising economics. The talk followed Dr Alves’s journey from being an economics student in South America, to developing her anthropological and historical knowledge to support her decolonisation work, including her co-authored book Decolonising Economics: An Introduction.

On 22 May, we held the second session in our Decolonising Knowledge Production at IGP lecture series, curated by Dr Hanna Baumann. Associate Professor, Helen Knowler spoke to staff and students about UCL’s Eugenics Legacy Education Project. Helen specialises in developing inclusive approaches to teaching and learning related to controversial or problematic issues. Members of the IGP community really appreciated hearing not only about UCL’s history, but about the team’s efforts to make recommendations on the best way to responsibly acknowledging this history in the curriculum. We were particularly inspired to find out the ELEP was created as a result of student advocacy on the topic – a powerful reminder to IGP students that tangible pedagogical changes can be made as a result of their endeavour.

As part of the IGP’s ten-year anniversary celebration, the institute hosted a series of Lebanon-centred events from 18th-22nd March 2024. The events, convened in collaboration with our Lebanese citizen scientists, part of our PROCOL Lebanon team, were open to staff, students, and members of the public. The events, which touched on many important themes of equality, diversity, and inclusion, featured workshops on the Politics of Decolonial Investigations and the Ethics of Solidarity, a Green New Deal for Lebanon and MENA: A transformative Approach, and the opening of a new art exhibition called Don’t stop drawing: Visual Diaries of Solidarity with Gaza, which also included a citizen science academy-led discussion on the exhibit itself, on the final day of Lebanon Week.

In February and March 2023, the Takhayyul project hosted 'The Imperial Threads' workshops series, which emphasized the need for a nuanced understanding of aesthetics, art, craft, culture, and life in Islamic empires, rather than subscribing to populist and simplistic Islamist political perspectives. You can read the project’s reflections on the series on the Takhayyul website.

In 2022, the project also led a roundtable event, Conducting Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Global South, which addressed some of the challenges regarding that field researchers might encounter in the Global South. There are various levels of complex dynamics and ethical concerns including violence and oppression, multiple layers of intimate connections, and commitment. If you are interested in learning more, do listen to the project’s podcast, The Takhayyul Nativeness and Emergent Issues series, which explores pressing issues in the Global South.