Title:
How diverse is your reading list? Exploring issues of representation and decolonisation in the UK
Authors:
K. Schucan Bird & Lesley Pitman
Published:
Higher Education, 79, 903-920 (2020)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-019-00446-9
From the abstract:
"There is a growing impetus, from university students and administrations, to decolonise the curriculum and develop diverse reading lists. Yet, there is limited theoretical or empirical analysis of the authorship of current reading lists to justify this imperative. The present study developed and applied a method for auditing the authorship on reading lists of two modules, one from science and one from social science, in a research-intensive British university. The paper explores whether these reading lists can be considered descriptively representative of the student body or scholarly community. The analysis of reading lists found empirical basis for concerns that university curricula are dominated by white, male and Eurocentric authors, with some exceptions. The reading lists did not represent the diverse local student body but came closer to representing the demographic profile of academic staff."