In this post, Akrit Ghimire describes his experience of auditing the Challenge Course, Understanding Decolonisation in a Globalised World’. Auditing classes allows students to attend courses, and engage to some degree, but without receiving course credit. Akrit is a second year Informatics Student and 2025/6 Students’ Association Vice President Community. This post is part of the ‘Creating a Challenge Course’ series.
Decolonisation is a term I’ve heard every so often growing up. Of course, I have had ideas of what it was, and people have told me their ideas of what it means. But I’ve never really given it too much thought. In my mind, it meant just having more representation and adding more colour to the whiteness I see. But this course shows that decolonisation is so much more. There are layers and components to decolonisation that have never occurred to me before. It is a big task to undertake, and one that requires a collective, not just an individual, to achieve.
Due to circumstances, I was unable to take this course for credit, but nonetheless I wanted to at least audit it. I wanted to learn more; to find out more on a topic so rarely taught in the school systems I have been through. Although the School of Informatics have undertaken a review and an attempt at decolonising the curriculum, it is a topic that is very much the elephant in the room and that no one really talks about at university. I have been through two years and a half years of university and this is the first semester in which I have the chance to learn about decolonisation.
The course is authentically interdisciplinary, which I love. It is not pulling content from just one source, or one school’s perspective; it is acknowledging that everyone has a different perspective in different contexts. This is so refreshing to see – I don’t know how many courses in the university are actually run with this interdisciplinary mindset. The course is also understandable and the topic is presented in an engaging way, with resources, lectures, scavenger hunts and tours. There are so many different mediums of learning used in it – it makes me want to learn more, and maybe even read the further readings!
All in all, although I am auditing the course, the refreshing and engaging nature of it makes me wish I took it for credit! There is this phrase that the course organiser used in the first lecture that made me know this course was for me – what I have been looking for unknowingly all along – and it was:
“there are different ways of knowing, it’s not just one way.”
To me, this is the central idea of decolonisation: there isn’t just one way of doing things and knowing things. There is a diverse mix of perspectives and truths out there, and who are we to choose that one way is the only way?
Akrit Ghimire
Akrit Ghimire is a second year School of Informatics student, and Students’ Association Vice President Community for the academic year 25/26.
