It started with an email asking if Rashne or I could attend the Hidden REF awards this year. My first thoughts were confused, what were the awards? What had we been nominated for? Checking in with Hidden REF I found we had been nominated by Emily Sena (who likely had told me she had at […]

Islamophobia is seen by many as the last acceptable form of racism and has been described as having “passed the dinner-table test.” It manifests, functions, and reproduces as a form of racism, with Muslim communities being frequently seen and treated as a racialised group. Islamophobia takes many forms from the more overt anti-Muslim hatred in […]

Written by Emily Sena As I end my tenure as co-convenor of our Edinburgh Race Equality Network (EREN), I wanted to reflect on my experience of co-founding a staff network for race equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI), on our history and on what I learnt along the way. How it started Back in 2014, I […]

I read with keen interest a recent UoE EREN blog post on the topic of black internship programs. I am a black academic. I was drawn to the post because I have a personal experience as a parent of two young black persons who applied to undertake a paid internship initiative for black undergraduates and […]

Growing up I was born and raised in Scotland to Pakistani parents and went to school in Edinburgh. There were very few pupils from a minority ethnic background in my school and I was fortunate in having experienced very little racism in primary school and for much of my first couple of years in high […]

2020 was a difficult year but a highlight for me was joining EREN and trying to learn more about how to actively be anti-racist. This little blog post is to share a story with you of one thing that EREN inspired.  It’s a small thing, but I believe it’s important for people like me, who […]

In the wake of the posting of black squares on social media, institutions and academic stakeholders were again rightly criticised for virtue signalling. As a black academic who has been in this “business” for almost 20 years, I have been involved in many conversations with colleagues about how terrible it is we have so little […]