125th Anniversary Scholarship for Black British Researchers - The Culture of Academic Inequalities and Attainment Gaps in the United Kingdom

Despite significant work to address student academic inequalities in the UK Higher Education sector, the problem of attainment and progression gaps persists. University approaches to the problems are often shaped by Office for Students’ mandates to close gaps between primarily white middle class students and historically marginalised including people of colour, working class, mature and differentially abled students.

Achievement gaps are understood through metrics of difference, i.e. differentials between white middle class and historically marginalised student attainment and progression rates with white middle class attainments understood as the norm. Attempts to manage the differentials include efforts to achieve Key Performance Indicators of improvement or gap closure. Best practices used to guide initiatives are based on research produced in westernised universities in which research leadership is predominantly EuroAmerican. EuroAmerican research is not known to prioritise the lived experience of historically marginalised people within the academy. Where it produces knowledge about social realities EuroAmerican epistemologies produce ‘damage centred¹’ research about historically marginalised people rather than understandings about the structures and systems that produce inequalities. There is, therefore, a lack of knowledge and understanding about student academic inequalities and gaps from the perspective of those who live them.

This project proposes that in order to close the ‘ignorance gap’ produced by an epistemological framework that does not foreground structural and systemic analyses of education culture, including its social systems and resulting dynamics, that a critical education approach² be taken.

This PhD scholarship would offer an opportunity for a Black British researcher to engage in research to explore this enduring problem from a critical education and cultural studies perspective. University of Birmingham is home to a historical critical tradition of interrogating relationships between race and educational inequalities. What makes this scholarship significant is that it allows the recipient to pair this tradition of inquiry with the work of Jamaican-British cultural theorist Stuart Hall who is one of the pioneers of cultural studies and whose archive is currently housed at the University of Birmingham.

For more information and to apply on-line, please click the above “Apply” button.

Funding Details

Additional Funding Information 

The University of Birmingham is proud to celebrate its remarkable 125-year journey and announce the launch of a groundbreaking scholarship initiative designed to empower and support Black British researchers in their pursuit of doctoral education.

These newly established 3.5-year scholarships aim to address underrepresentation and create opportunities for talented individuals from diverse backgrounds to excel in academia. You can find out more here: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/research/funding/black-british-researchers-scholarship

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