See below for information about a lecture being organised by the Department of Education and Professional Studies at King’s College London. 

Please email [log in to unmask] to reserve a place.

Best wishes

Debbie Epstein

Policy Development and Training Officer

Equality and Diversity Department

You are cordially invited to the Department of Education & Professional Studies 2008 Annual Lecture. This year we are delighted to welcome Professor  Ann Phoenix to the department whose lecture comes two weeks before the 60th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush, (which signifies the start of mass migration from the Caribbean to the UK), and reflects on the recursiveness of debates on racialisation, racism and education in multicultural societies.

The event is free and open to all. We do hope that you are able to join us.

King’s College London
Department of Education & Professional Studies Annual Lecture
Old battles on new terrain or new battles on old terrain? Renegotiating multicultures.
Professor Ann Phoenix (Institute of Education)
June 11 2008
17.00 reception, 17.30 lecture, 18.30 wine
Great Hall, Strand Campus
All welcome

Over the last five years multiculturalism has re-emerged as a site of heated debate as writers, across the political spectrum, have argued that multiculturalism as philosophy and practice is untenable. At the same time children in UK schools are living multicultures in complex ways differentiated by ethnicity, gender, social class and place. Researchers on racialisation, ethnicisation, identities and schooling find themselves negotiating contradictions between new practices of 'convivial multicultures' (Gilroy, 2004) and the (re)production of racisms and racialised educational inequality  (Gillborn, 2008). Multicultures and multiracisms coexist  (Cohen, 1999). The linear story that used to be told of the UK moving from educational philosophies of assimilation through integration to multiculturalism to anti-racism is clearly overly simplistic. Instead elements of each of these have sedimented into common sense.

This lecture considers the ways in which multiracisms and multicultures have been negotiated in UK schools. It considers the history of the present by juxtaposing the experiences of young people who went to school in the 1980s with those of young people at school in the 2000s. It discusses:  the ways in which inequalities in educational outcome have both shifted and been reproduced; how gender, racialisation, social class and geography intersect in young people's everyday practices and how these issues have been reworked and re-theorised over time. In doing so, it takes a psychosocial and intersectional approach to understanding how young people negotiate interactions in their 'communities of practice' and how experiences of racism in their schooling led their parents' generation to seek for improvements for their children.

Ann Phoenix is Co-Director of the Thomas Coram Research Unit at the Institute of Education. She was previously Professor of Social and Developmental Psychology at the Open University. Her research interests include motherhood, social identities and young people.

Please email [log in to unmask] to reserve your place.

For a map of the Strand Campus please see http://www.kcl.ac.uk/about/campuses/strand-det.html

       For details of all Annual Lectures held in the department please visit: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/education/annuallecture.html


Leonie Taylor
Marketing & Publicity Officer
Department of Education & Professional Studies
King's College London, Franklin-Wilkins Building
Rm 1/1 Waterloo Bridge Wing
Waterloo Road
London SE1 9NH
Tel : (+44) (0)207 848 3139
Department Fax: (+44) (0)207 848 3182

www.kcl.ac.uk/education