Black bodies on cobbled streets - Understanding the experiences of Black British students at elite universities in the UK

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Black British (including Black multi-ethnic students) are underrepresented at elitehigher education institutions in the UK, which remain fairly ethnically homogenous.Yet increasing media attention spotlights the racism on campus. There is a paucityof sociological research focused on the experiences of Black British students at elitehigher education institutions, although there has been a growth in this area of study.The proposed research will thus aim platform the voices and experiences of BlackBritish students and critically explore the institutional and cultural mechanisms thatframe their university experience. The research aims to understand and explore theexperiences of Black British students at elite, ethnically homogenous, universities,through narrative and spatial lenses. Qualitative methods will be employed to dothis. Narrative interviews will explore their experiences through the themes ofhostility and resilience, as outlined in existing literature, with a focus onunderstanding the heterogeneity of the Black British student experience at eliteuniversities. It will also explore perceptions of allyship. This will be supplementedwith ethnographic walking interviews, which will seek to understand how BlackBritish students navigate the elite university environment. These methods will beenriched by an analytical autoethnography, to better address my positionality as aBlack British student studying at an elite university, researching Black Britishstudents studying at elite universities. The proposed research is not only timely, inthe wake of the 2020 BLM movement, but also has the ability to be representativeof pledges made by the academy in regard to decolonising.