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

像牛津大学这样的精英机构投入资金和资源来扩大参与（Bradshaw，2018; Bhopal，2018）。然而，大卫拉米挑战牛桥和他们无法在他们的机构内足够快地恢复真正的种族和文化多样性。考虑到只有1.5%的学生被提供给黑人学生，拉米称一些牛桥学院在过去五年中只给一个黑人学生一个名额，如果有的话，这是一个“社会种族隔离”，因为大学队列没有反映社会中的种族多样性（亚当斯和Bengsston，2017年; Shilliam，2018年）。除了精英大学未能为黑人学生提供名额外，还出现了一个关于大学殖民地性的问题，这个问题一直困扰着就读这些大学的黑人学生。2016年，学生们积极挑战高等教育机构中存在的制度性种族主义。BAME本科生形成了罗兹必须下降牛津（RMFO）运动，这有一个三管齐下的议程，以非殖民化的图像，课程和牛津大学内的代表性（Gebrial，2018）。更具体地看有关英语课程内容的运动，一个20分钟的视频“为什么我的课程是白色？“，由大学学院伦敦（UCL）的学生，明确迫使大学反思殖民主义在塑造我们所能获得的财富中所扮演的角色（Hussain，2015）。而Lola Olufemi的信（2017年），由100多人共同签署，剑桥大学，要求课程和评估内容的非殖民化。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，这使得这成为进一步审视他们经历的关键时刻。继Kehinde Andrews在92年后的机构提供的创新“黑人研究”课程（这是英国唯一的也是第一个此类课程）之后，他表示，他认为精英大学永远不会参与提供“黑人研究”课程，因为“那些神圣的墙壁内根深蒂固的保守主义”（2018，第133页）。这种怀疑，虽然可以理解，似乎是失败主义;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非殖民化课程的必要性和优势。在这种背景下，这个博士项目的目的是与二年级的英国黑人本科生如何看待他们的英语课程和他们在大学学习英语的经验，以获得一些清晰的本科英语课程的基本特征在六所精英大学。为了进行这项研究，我打算利用半结构化的采访与二年级的英国黑人学生，建立一个深入了解他们的本科经验，在大学学习英语，以及如何这可能有助于他们的理解去殖民化。

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.