Black British undergraduate students' academic and social experiences while studying English and or History at Russell Group universities

牛津大学等精英机构将资金和资源投入到扩大参与上（Bradshaw, 2018; Bhopal, 2018）。然而，大卫·拉米对牛津剑桥提出了质疑，认为他们无法在自己的机构内迅速建立真正的种族和文化多样性。鉴于提供给学生的名额中只有1.5%给了黑人学生，Lammy将一些牛桥学院在过去五年中只给黑人学生一个名额的事实称为“社会种族隔离”，因为大学群体并没有反映社会的种族多样性（Adams and Bengsston, 2017; Shilliam, 2018）。除了精英大学无法为黑人学生提供名额之外，还出现了一个关于大学的殖民性的问题，这个问题一直困扰着那些上这些大学的黑人学生。2016年，学生们积极挑战存在于高等教育机构中的制度性种族主义。BAME的本科生组成了Rhodes Must Fall Oxford （RMFO）运动，该运动有一个三管齐下的议程，即在牛津大学内非殖民化图像、课程和代表性（Gebrial, 2018）。更具体地说，关于英语课程内容的活动，一个20分钟的视频“为什么我的课程是白色的？”，由伦敦大学学院（UCL）的学生制作，明确地迫使大学反思殖民主义在塑造我们可以接触到的课程中所扮演的角色（Hussain, 2015）。洛拉·奥卢费米（Lola Olufemi）给剑桥大学的信（2017年）由100多人共同签署，要求将课程和评估内容非殖民化。最终，呼吁大学课程非殖民化并不是一个新现象（Gebrial, 2018），但最近它在学生中获得了力量，这使得现在成为进一步研究他们经历的关键时刻。继Kehinde Andrews在1992年后的一所机构开设的创新“黑人研究”课程（英国唯一也是第一个此类课程）之后，他建议他不认为精英大学会开设“黑人研究”课程，因为“那些神圣的墙内根深蒂固的保守主义”（2018年，第133页）。这种怀疑虽然可以理解，但似乎是一种失败主义；重要的是要继续检查、挑战和揭露这些精英机构的课程和教学规定，以敦促他们反思我所认为的课程非殖民化的必要性和优势。在此背景下，本博士项目的目的是研究英国黑人本科二年级学生如何看待他们的英语课程和他们在大学学习英语的经历，以便对六所精英大学本科英语课程的基本特征有所了解。为了进行这项研究，我打算利用对二年级黑人英国学生的半结构化访谈，加深对他们在大学学习英语的本科经历的理解，以及这可能如何有助于他们对非殖民化的理解。

Elite institutions like Oxford University invest finances and resources into widening participation (Bradshaw, 2018; Bhopal, 2018). However, David Lammy challenges Oxbridge and their inability to instate true ethnic and cultural diversity within their institutions fast enough. Given that only 1.5% of the places offered to students were given to Black students, Lammy dubbed the fact that some Oxbridge colleges have given only one place, if at all, to a Black student in the last five years, a 'social apartheid', as the college cohorts did not reflect racial diversity in society (Adams and Bengsston, 2017; Shilliam, 2018).In addition to elite universities 'failure to offer places to Black students, an issue regarding the coloniality of the university, that constantly confronts the Black students who do attend these universities, arises. In 2016, students actively challenged the institutional racism that resides in establishments for higher education. BAME undergraduate students formed the Rhodes Must Fall Oxford (RMFO) campaign, which had a triple pronged agenda to decolonise iconography, curriculum and representation within the university of Oxford (Gebrial, 2018). Looking more specifically at campaigns concerning the content in the English curriculum, a 20-minute video 'Why is My Curriculum White?', made by University College London (UCL) students, explicitly forced the universities to reflect on the role colonialism has played in shaping the curriculums we have access to (Hussain, 2015). While Lola Olufemi's letter (2017), co-signed by over 100 people, to Cambridge University, requested a decolonisation of the course and assessment content. Ultimately, a call for the decolonisation of the curriculum in the university is not a new phenomenon (Gebrial, 2018), but recently it has gained power among students, which makes this a key time to examine their experiences further. Following Kehinde Andrews' innovative 'Black Studies' course offered at a post '92 institution (the only and first course of this kind in the UK), he suggests that he does not think that elite universities would ever engage in offering a 'Black Studies' course, because of the 'entrenched conservatism within those hallowed walls' (2018, p. 133). This scepticism, although understandable, seems defeatist; it is important to continue to examine, challenge and expose the curriculum and pedagogic provision at these elite institutions to urge them to reflect on what I would frame as the necessity for, and advantages of, decolonising the curriculum. In light of this backdrop, the purpose of this DPhil project is to engage with how second year Black British undergraduate students perceive their English curriculums and their experience of studying English at the university, in order to gain some clarity on the fundamental features of the undergraduate English course across six elite universities. To conduct this research, I intend to utilise semi-structured interviews with second year Black British students, to build a deepened understanding of their undergraduate experience studying English at University and how this may contribute to their understanding of decolonisation.