Decolonising the curriculum

Universities and academics worldwide are involved in efforts to decolonise the psychology curriculum in higher education.

Decolonisation refers to challenging and revising assumptions, values, and practices influenced by - and reflective of - a colonising power.

A colonising power is a state or nation that dominates another area by enforcing their political and economic beliefs and practices over citizens in that area, often using violence, exploitation and enslavement to do this.

The process of decolonisation requires acknowledging the history of oppression and inequalities and understanding how they still influence almost every part of our lives today.

Colonial political and cultural assumptions continue to determine psychological values and practices.

In the United Kingdom (UK), Keele University's Decolonising the Curriculum Manifesto defines decolonisation as:

"creating spaces and resources for a dialogue among all members of the university on how to imagine and envision all cultures and knowledge systems in the curriculum and with respect to what is being taught and how it frames the world."

Decolonising the curriculum has also been summarised by Sabaratnam (2017) as a combination of

critically interrogating assumptions about how the world works and how these assumptions implicate ethnic minoritised individuals;
questioning the location and identity of authors and the reproduction of knowledge, interrogating what they write, how they write about it, and what influence this has on our understanding;
considering the implications of a diverse student body in terms of pedagogy and achievement.

Therefore, decolonisation breaks down structural barriers and inequities to provide students with equal opportunities to succeed.

There are a number of approaches vital to decolonising the curriculum in practice, such as:

Account for racism's influence on behaviour

Expose the way in which racial inequality is perpetuated through 'normal' or everyday structures in society and in your subject. This is a relevant influence to human behaviour (psychology's focus). Critical Race Theory is a theoretical framework that can be particularly useful here (Rollock & Gillborn, 2011).

Audit readings lists

Map the geopolitics of academic publication (Canagarajah, 2002) and consult a wider range of source materials, especially sources from the Global South (Collyey, 2018).

Involve students in decision making

Survey the content students would like to study and make space in your module to teach these topics where applicable, bearing in mind the global outlook students should have.

Advocate for diverse teaching staff

Inviting diverse guest lecturers could be the first step towards advocating for your department to be made up of diverse and representative staff. Positive discrimination in hiring is legally justified when an organisation is underrepresented to the population or community it serves. This aptly applies to psychology departments whose student body is often more diverse than its staff. It can mean teaching positions are prioritised to ethnic minoritized candidates.

Question the curricula

How diverse are the researchers on the syllabus?
What is the effect of this on the diversity of views with which the students are presented?
To what extent are the Global South and gender minorities represented accurately in the curricula?

Implement changes

Make the conscious decision to change. Starting smaller is usually better than doing nothing and simple steps such as sending an email around to teaching colleagues about the need to decolonise with some suggested resources to do so can be effective. As can teaching about the Global Northern, White and male dominance of psychology in existing Introductory or General psychology content.

Challenge any uncomfortable feelings and unconscious biases

Students and staff may find these discussions uncomfortable but challenge why that is and how to foster a healthy and safe environment so talking about decolonisation is the norm

These are only the first steps to working towards a decolonised curriculum.

Decolonising the curriculum is beneficial for many reasons. It can result in educational, psychological, and societal benefits (The University of Birmingham ).

On a psychological level:

Prioritising theories from white scholars and scientists in the UK, USA, and Europe (e.g., the Global North) diminishes and undervalues the experiences and contributions of those in countries in Africa, South America and Asia (e.g., the Global South). These omissions not only impact the education of students from ethnic minoritised backgrounds as it lacks research that reflects their experiences. It can also negatively impact their mental health as it is just another area where they're not represented. White and Global Northern students are also underserved by these biases particularly in not developing their cultural and global competency.
Students from ethnic minoritised backgrounds can often feel a sense of isolation in higher education, as most student bodies and academic staff in universities are white (NUS & Universities UK, 2019). Current curriculums may reinforce their sense of alienation and create feelings of imposter syndrome (The University of Birmingham ).

On a societal level:

The psychology curriculum impacts more than just students' academic experiences. It also shows how lessons learned from courses and classes may influence beliefs and practices outside educational settings (e.g., knowledge of current social and political inequities).
When all students do not receive curricula that include the experiences of people from ethnic minoritised backgrounds, this can have significant effects in real-world settings (e.g., treatment of mental distress). Cultural needs and practices that ensure all people are treated competently and with respect are important in psychology curricula.

Sources:

There are many wonderful resources to help diversify psychology away from its white, western bias.

We have organised these in the following categories.

Teaching resources
Articles and reports that can be used to design and diversify specific sub-disciplines of psychology.
Find out more
Activities for teaching
Lectures, seminar activities and other teaching materials that can be used to build anti-racism into a psychology curriculum.
Find out more
Racism in Higher Education
Research, reports and resources highlighting and offering guidance to tackle racism in HE.
Find out more

Short paragraph of descriptive text needed.

1. Can you please tell me a bit about yourself?

I’m an Aboriginal woman and a Senior Lecturer at Monash University, but I’m not a psychologist by trade. Both my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees were in International Development, so I come from a background in sociology, anthropology and politics.

2. What does your role involve?

I do research and teaching around the wellbeing of Indigenous peoples, which involves thinking about the traditional coping practices of these communities and what they look like in the modern-day context. I also supervise PhD students in psychology. As lead of Murrup Bung'allambee Indigenous Psychology Group, I also spearhead the work to transform our psychology curriculum to be more culturally responsive and decolonial - a work in progress!

3. What is your favourite part of your job?

The best part of my job is supervising and mentoring other Indigenous students. I find so much joy in seeing young people find their passion and contribute to the well-being of the broader community. One of the lessons that I learned through my PhD is the value of having a dedicated, trustworthy supervisor who invests in you and genuinely values you as a person. So I strive to be that for the other Indigenous students who come up through the university.

4. What does decolonising psychology mean to you, and why is it important?

While I can see the value in the term ‘decolonisation’, I don't necessarily see it as possible or feasible, but I suppose it depends on how you interpret it. I’ve seen other terms being used, like Indigenisation, where you're putting something back in rather than trying to separate different systems. I can see the value in that, too. I think for me, the concept of decolonisation in psychology is really about asking the field, both practitioners and academics, to reconcile with the past in a way that can move us forward.

Australia is an ongoing settler colony. We are still under British rule. We have never had a treaty between any of the Indigenous peoples and the British sovereign, and we never ceded our sovereignty. In 2023, Australia held a referendum on changing our Constitution to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the first peoples of the land and to establish an advisory body of Indigenous peoples to Parliament. 60% of Australia voted No. I think that the outcome of that vote made us step back and consider that the way that we've been doing things and advocating clearly isn't working. It's made us think: where can we contribute effort without burdening and traumatising ourselves further? I don't know that we've got the answer yet.

5. Do you see decolonisation as also challenging sexism in psychology, including the lack of women authors, participants and researchers?

Yes, absolutely. When we talk about colonisation, sometimes people only think of the imposition of political power. But I think that colonisation is inherently tied to these other systems of oppression. I find the interplay with Indigenous values quite interesting because we can see very clear definitions in roles and responsibilities for different genders, but those different roles and responsibilities, which in today's culture might look sexist, actually hold a different type of value. For example, the value that was placed on a woman being in charge of child-rearing and maintaining the household is different to what it is now. I think the process of decolonisation needs to reconcile and acknowledge these different values and principles. Colonisation came with the values of constant growth, consumption, individualism and different gender ideals. Decolonisation has to dismantle all of those structures.

6. Is decolonisation incorporated in your area of work? Who is usually leading those efforts?

At the moment, a lot of different health accreditation bodies in Australia are adding concepts of cultural safety and cultural responsiveness to their standards, which kind of gives us a platform to create change. I want to acknowledge the incredible tenacity, advocacy, and hard work of Indigenous health leaders to champion this change, such as the Australian Indigenous Psychology Education Project. Incorporating decolonisation means acknowledging that colonisation is not something that was left in the past; it’s reckoning with the ongoing challenges that we face in the present. Researchers are taking the values and principles from Indigenous knowledges and putting them into the current context.

7. How do you incorporate decolonisation into your work? What does it look like?

A lot of what I do is challenging the beliefs and behaviours of academics and researchers. I'm fortunate in that I have some leadership within my school that is very supportive of some of these ideas. I've created 2 brand new units in our undergraduate degree and updated units in some of our postgraduate degrees. I've created a unit on allyship in Indigenous health, and one on cultural safety, responsiveness and reflexivity, as well as addressing the harmful content that is a legacy of ongoing colonisation.

8. What are some of the challenges you face in decolonising your work?

Defensiveness: I have found that there is a lot of defensiveness and privilege. So the work is dismantling ideas of superiority and getting people to be vulnerable and look at themselves and their practices and beliefs. We need to first have these conversations to get us to a point where we can start to enact decolonisation.
Time: The amount of time I spend on this as a proportion of my workload is astronomical. It isn't acknowledged anywhere in the job responsibilities, and that's on top of doing the dedicated work of creating a new curriculum.
Emotional impact: A lot of my work is trying to convince others that oppressed people have value and that marginalised people's knowledge systems have value. It's draining work, but it's incredibly necessary. In Psychology, it's asking Western psychology to acknowledge that other knowledges exist. It has to be that basic, so I don't get the opportunity to actually do anything genuinely decolonising because they're not at that level yet.
Fear of getting it wrong: If somebody shows that they are willing and open to doing the hard work to be vulnerable, and to look at themselves and change, then yes, get it wrong. You're going to get it wrong. That’s fine. There is no straight journey here. If you can demonstrate your own cultural humility and your capacity and willingness to be vulnerable and change, we will walk alongside you.

9. What are your hopes for the future of decolonising work in psychology?

I have a lot of compassion and hope in younger generations. I think social media has opened up a lot of conversations that people did not have access to before. I don't necessarily know if it was just social media or globalisation or if there's been some other inherent shift through the generations where young people are no longer willing to accept the status quo, but there has been a change. Yes, there will always be young people who have been so heavily influenced by their parent’s generation and by right-wing influencers in the media, but you are likely to find that a high proportion of young people, for example, in a tutorial, will call somebody out when something inappropriate is said.

10. What role do you think organisations such as the APS (Australian Psychological Society) and other professional psychology organisations should have in decolonising the psychology curriculum?

A lot of it will be combating these ideas of Western science being the gold standard and other systems of knowledge being inappropriate. It will involve acknowledging that the clients of psychologists come with different values and beliefs and that if current psychological practice isn't meeting those needs, perhaps they should be taking a different approach.

Speaking from my experience, one of the requirements for accreditation for a new undergraduate degree is that all the lecturers have to have a psychology degree. I do not have a psychology degree. They had to recognise that the value I had from my own Indigenous knowledge systems was just as valuable as a degree in psychology. To decolonise means to grapple with what you think is the norm.

11. If people took away just one point on decolonising the curriculum, what would it be?

To move forward, we need to recognise the inherent value and power of Indigenous knowledge systems, those of oppressed communities. To learn from them appropriately, you have to recognise their value even if you don't understand them. So I think a lot of it is about respect - respecting that there are other knowledge systems; other ways of healing, knowing, being and doing that come from other cultures and have so much value.

Institutional page: Cammi Murrup-Stewart — Monash University

Twitter: Dr Cammi Murrup-Stewart 🇵🇸 (@CMurrupStewart) / X (twitter.com)

Can you please tell me a bit about yourself?

I am the Head of the School of Psychological Sciences at Monash University. I'm a Professor of Sleep and Circadian Medicine and a psychologist. I actually studied psychology and law, so initially I was going to go into a legal career. But I loved psychology, and I developed a passion for sleep research, which is my area of expertise. I was born in Sri Lanka and my family all moved to Australia when I was young because of the looming civil war. So, I also have a lot of personal experiences as someone who's transitioned between two different cultures and continents, and also the experience of being an immigrant.

What does your role involve?

A lot of my work involves leadership. In my role as the Head of School, I work with the leadership team to manage the school. I'm also actively involved in research, and I supervise research students at the postgraduate level. I contribute quite a lot to the broader discipline of psychology through my professional roles in different organizations, including as the chair of the board of an organization called the Sleep Health Foundation, which is an organization that represents the national community interest in sleep.

What is your favorite part of your job?

My favorite part of my job is working in a capacity where I can support and promote the career development of people who are early in their careers, as the Head of School, as a research lab head, as well as in positions of leadership outside the university. The other exciting part of my role is that I like to listen to conversations and think about what the opportunity from that conversation would be, and to generate ideas about how we could bring capabilities together to solve complex problems that society faces. I love walking out of a room and feeling as though we've really done something significant by bringing lots of components together to build something significant and impactful.

What does decolonising psychology mean to you, and why is it important?

I'm the Head of School of Psychological Sciences, I'm a psychologist, and I also have a cultural link to my community. To start with, as a young adult, I changed my last name from Wilson, to Wilson Rajaratnam, to acknowledge my cultural heritage and to effectively “decolonise my name”. I find that my community reaches out to me to seek advice and to seek support for a variety of mental health needs and purposes. I realise how much this is outside the Western model of psychology. It's a very community-based approach to tackling mental health and psychological challenges. And I realised that the model or the paradigm that we have used for years and that we're training all of our students in, is not serving the needs of the entire community around us - because there are people in the community whose mental health and psychological health needs require a different cultural approach or perspective. The second thing that dawned on me is that there is a whole lot of knowledge, wisdom and practice that has developed over millennia in non-Western cultures that we don't appreciate, that we don't teach our students about and that has largely been ignored.

Can you give me an example of the ways in which that approach is different from the Western model of psychology?

My experience of my own cultural community is that people want to go to someone that they trust, with whom they have built a relationship to talk about very personal details like mental health. It's a different model to going to a health practitioner, who is someone they may or may not know. But that made me realise that a different model is maybe appropriate for people who come from different cultural backgrounds. Perhaps a community-based model where you have people within the community who are trusted, who have deep knowledge of the cultural practices of that community and are trained in mental health or psychology.

Do you see decolonisation as also challenging sexism in psychology including the lack of women authors, participants and researchers?

I do. I see that decolonising calls for a complete transformation of psychology to reflect more accurately the breadth of the community, because we know that the discipline has been shaped and moulded by the perspectives of a very narrow group. Women are completely underrepresented in the developing and shaping of the psychology discipline.

Is decolonisation incorporated in your area of work? Who is usually leading those efforts?

In Australia our accreditation body requires us to ensure that there is cultural responsiveness in the curriculum that is appropriately integrated within the program and clearly articulated in learning outcomes. In parallel with that, work is underway to conduct research that ensures that the perspectives and the practices of diverse communities are appropriately represented in the research that we do. For example, I strongly advocate and support the building of a psychology curriculum and research programs that genuinely engage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's perspectives into mental health, research, policy and practice.

How do you incorporate decolonisation in sleep research?

I've recognised that in my own area colonisation has significantly impacted sleep health. So, firstly, with the invention of electric lighting we transformed and disrupted our sleep-wake cycle. Once upon a time, midnight was literally the middle of the night. But literally with the flick of a light switch, midnight suddenly became the beginning of the night for a lot of people. The second major transformation that this produced is the 24-hour society that we live in, which has introduced a number of significant challenges to our sleep health, including disruption of the circadian system, inadequate sleep duration, and a vast array of health consequences that come with that.

Now, part of decolonising sleep health in my opinion, will be looking at practices of communities that promoted healthy sleep prior to these colonial influences. I visited an indigenous community in India which did not have access to electricity, and I was fascinated by the pattern of behaviour that was entirely predictable based on synchronisation with the solar light and dark cycle, because that was the major time cue. We've now become a society where we're completely overriding the solar light-dark cycle with artificial lighting and occupational and educational demands as well. Ideally, people would regularise their sleep as far as possible to align with their biological clock.

What are some of the challenges you face in decolonising your work?

With education, some of the challenges are:

Have we got the resources to do this well, and to do this appropriately? If you're going to seriously invest in something like this, you need to actually provide people with the resources, tools and time to do this.
The social and cultural environment in which we live. Consider the public discourse about decolonisation – what are people’s perspectives and attitudes? Is there genuine buy-in to decolonising psychology?
Disrupting the status quo is always going to come with its challenges. People have taught psychology in a particular paradigm for hundreds of years. It’s the approach we've all been trained in - confronting that is disruptive.

In research, I think there is a blending of Western models of science with what's perceived as academic metrics, and so measures of success intertwined with a Western model of research. For example, for job applications and for academic promotion, we’re looking at grant applications, publications in high impact journals - all of these things as measures of our research performance. When we talk about decolonising research, we have to be prepared to accept different metrics of performance and impact. And that's quite challenging in the current environment, because people want to make sure that what they do is going to be appropriately recognised and incentivised. So, I think that's why it will move slowly, because measures of success in research are inextricably tied to our colonial past and context. It is the system in which we all function in academic settings – that is going to take some time to change.

What are your hopes for the future of decolonising work in psychology?

The first thing that I'm really hopeful about is the growing awareness of the need for decolonisation. In my career, I have not seen such a positive movement being mobilised in this area before. The second is that I see a new generation of people who are much more open to challenging the status quo. So I see in the generation of students that have a greater understanding of colonisation, of cultural responsiveness. And I think that will be a critical part of change.

What role do you think organisations such as the APS or sections such as POWES should have in decolonising the psychology curriculum?

I think they should provide a framework, and then they should provide the resources to support institutions in implementing change in a culturally safe way. Professional organisations can also incentivise decolonisation by changing the kind of metrics the discipline uses to mark progress. I think, because decolonisation can mean very different things at multiple different levels, professional organisations should specify what the requirements would be of academic programs in the country and prescribe them.

If people took away just 1 point on decolonising the curriculum what would it be?

I'm an optimist, and I see opportunity. Decolonisation comes with so much opportunity. It comes with the opportunity to equip psychology trainees with skills that they can use to better serve the communities around them. It gives us the opportunity to tap into knowledge that has been overlooked for long periods of time. It gives us tremendous scope to expand the sphere of what we're doing, and solve some of the complex problems of our world through ancient knowledge and practice.

LinkedIn: Shantha Wilson Rajaratnam
Institutional page: Shanthakumar Wilson Rajaratnam - Monash University
Sleep Health Foundation: Shantha Rajaratnam

1. Can you please tell me a bit about yourself?

My name's Jacob Thomas. My pronouns are they/them and I'm currently a PHD student at Latrobe University, based here in Naarm or Melbourne. I'm looking at what does queer psychology look like in the context of Australia. So looking at it from an LGBTQ+ perspective, but also like querying and disrupting a discipline that has caused a great deal of harm for a number of communities and still does. Especially in malpractice but also recognising the power imbalance that affects minorities (we also like to use the term underserved). How does the outer part of the circle actually benefit the centre rather than having to move to the centre to be benefited? So I always like to think of, how does queerness get used as a strength, how can we improve psychology through that? And so looking at it from a multifactorial perspective.

2. You mentioned that you research queer psychology. What does your role involve?

So prior to doing this, I was actually in human rights. So I worked in decriminalisation and focused on decolonising around queer perspectives throughout the Commonwealth. Which was really interesting but I've always come back to mental health as my core focus. I also teach, research, and build curriculum around queer perspectives. Because in the Australian context we have nothing at all. It's not a requirement, it is very much, you know, stuck in those opportunities for minor perspectives. Or it's a special week. And so, my whole focus is trying to just establish and then build competency from first year through to masters or to PhD and then into practice as well. So that we actually have competent trained psychologists. Or people in the mental health field who just feel comfortable to say I don't know what that means. 'Could you explain it to me' or 'Hey, what do you need' or 'Hey, you don't know. Good thing. I've checked this out.'

3. What is your favourite part of your job?

I'd say the favourite part is seeing students see themselves in the curriculum. I didn't go through with my psychology degree when I started on many moons ago, because it was just terrible. We were still having a discussion around whether the gay gene existed. When I'm teaching, I sometimes do it in full head-to-toe drag as well. So like actually bringing in the queer narrative into the classroom and you see the joy and the delight of queer students. It's so intense. It's not subtle. It's right there. I know students do actually enjoy the fact that queerness is actually expressed in a much stronger way that they're actually exposed to. It's the same way that we get stuck with heteronormativity every single day. Queerness is disruptive and I think that's also important within decolonising.

4. What does decolonising psychology mean to you, and why is it important?

I think because I focus so much on a queer perspective, I made a commitment to myself when I got this space to make sure that I wasn't talking about a white, gay perspective in psychology. Because to me, it's just like, well, you can't disentangle either of those pieces apart from each other. If you're going to talk about queer perspectives, you have to talk about black and brown perspectives. You have to talk about disabled perspectives. You have to talk about class. You can't separate them. And so it's just like, well then, if we're going to decolonise, then as white folks do the work, that's it. It's not good enough to just say 'oh, you're the queer one. Do the queer work.' That's not fixing anything. That's not capacity building. You're not paying me the right amount to do that. It's just so surprising still - I know this is the privilege showing - but again it's so surprising time and time again when I have to say to people 'you need to also let the queer people be not white' and you just see course designers, curriculum developers, and academics and they just don't consider it because they assume that the queer person I was talking about was white. I'm just like at no point, did I say that the person was or wasn't white. You have assumed that and that's our problem. Decolonising for me is questioning your thinking and unpacking your bias.

And when I sat looking at experiences of trans kids and their cultural identities and their narratives and their and how they want to view themselves and express themselves, and I can't take race into account because there is no data on it, that's a problem.

I'm not sure this is going to fix everything by any means, but we need all these discussions about intersectionality and how important the lens is. We can't just talk about it and then say, 'Oh, that's a bit hard'. Do the work. I was discussing a systematic review with Cammi (link Cammi interview/bio). It covered every piece of literature from I think about 1987. It looked at how often race was talked about and measured and who did it. And to the surprise of no one, overwhelmingly across every field of every discipline of psychology, white people spoke about race. There are a few colleagues of colour who spoke about it. Very few black colleagues spoke about any of it. And it was overwhelmingly done by white authors and overwhelmingly approved by white editors.

5. Do you see decolonisation as also challenging sexism in psychology including the lack of women authors, participants and researchers? And while we're talking about it, any non-binary researchers because honestly, none come to mind?

I know me. That's kind of it, right? Not to put all the credit and responsibility on Crenshaw (cite Crenshaw report), but you can't disentangle all of these issues we try to tackle. We can't look at like Western perspectives and European psychology and say that all of those white men were fine. And because we know they weren't, and they caused a lot of problems. I remember a history of the psychology unit and I was just like, 'oh, that's right. I forgot how long it took for a woman to be credited.' The bar is just so low. I just don't know how an intelligent person can look at a field like this one and say it's fine.

6. Is decolonisation incorporated in your area of work? Who is usually leading those efforts?

It's who you'd expect it to be. An Indigenous person doing the Indigenous stuff. A queer person doing the queer stuff. A woman doing the woman stuff. A disabled person doing the disabled stuff. And sometimes the one person that is part of all those minorities. Usually on a lower paid salary or casual position. I don't expect it to be different anywhere else and I think that's depressing. If I'm the most diverse person you have, it's bad.

7. How do you incorporate decolonisation into your work?/What does it look like? I was gonna say I feel like you doing a whole lecture in drag is probably the best way.

Totally. I'm being disruptive because I'm in drag and that's totally fine. But I also think a huge problem at the moment is the queer community misusing slang. And I don't set a hard boundary with students necessarily but they need to recognise if they're stealing black women's language. It's also not queer culture. Queerness isn't just glitter and vaping. We need to understand the issues that the community face, especially those who are in multiple marginalised groups. It's not just about white suffering or Western Black suffering. We also have to talk about issues like Evangelicalism has killed so many queer people in Africa.

8. What are some of the challenges you face in decolonising your work?

I think one of the most dangerous challenges is apathy. It's really hard to change people's minds. There's the Desmond Tutu quote, 'If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor'. That's why it's so scary because they don't care. You see it when people don't care about decolonising work because they don't see the point. Or when people don't vote in referendums because they say it doesn't affect them. Out of all the horrible things I've faced, I think apathy terrifies me the most.

9. What are your hopes for the future of decolonising work in psychology?

I hope we finally do it and not just talk about it. The bar's pretty low. There are some good examples though. There's a university who are actually finally paying their Indigenous staff for their emotional labour. They pay extra because they know they know the staff will have to do extra. (they think it was Macquarie but I looked it up and couldn't find anything to cite) From a research perspective I want queer centres of research, because how do you train people to decolonise if you don't have anywhere to do it.

Also, personally, I want to collaborate more. I'm always happy to review or edit papers. I don't need my name on anything either. I just hope white folks do the basic work.

But genuinely, I just hope we can share our knowledge. This is knowledge that the world could benefit from but they don't want to hear it. Imagine queer perspectives in hormone therapies. I don't think we've done a longitudinal study on hormone replacement therapy ever. Imagine if we took the intensity and all the assurance and all the pain and all the judgement and all the success and all the joy of queer experiences in that and applied those frameworks out into the world. I think people might be happier.

10. What role do you think organisations such as the BPS or sections such as POWES should have in decolonising the psychology curriculum?

I know it shouldn't be a rewards based system, but incentivising staff and institutions to actually work towards decolonisation would be a good first step. You need a minimum standard to say that this needs to be incorporated as a compulsory part of the curriculum. Organisations need to change the standard. Staff like me don't want to have to fight with our higher-ups and so it helps if it's actually just the bare minimum. Improving guidelines actually helps improve the ways we study, teach, and research. We should be teaching this from the first year of undergraduate learning. People start to specialise after and then end up putting all the work on themselves so you just don't have the capacity. So start at first year and let's work our way up. Build a foundation like you're building a house. By the time you get to people working on their PhDs you've got seven years of systemic change.

Also, I don't want it to just be 'here's a diverse population'. I want to make sure that we are teaching methodologies from a scientific perspective that focus on a decolonising approach. I want a disability justice based approach in how we talk about mental health. I want a feminist narrative around women's experiences and gender diverse folks. Keep talking about it and keep improving with each other. That's what I want - working collaboratively. That would be neat.

11.If people took away just one point on decolonising the curriculum what would it be?

Anyone can get involved from any point. There's multiple entry points. You don't have to do the most complex, systematically arduous, confusing, messy stuff immediately. There's a number of different ways we can do it. We just need to do something instead of nothing.

Can you please tell me a bit about yourself?

I'm a Tagalaka woman currently doing a clinical psychology PhD. I did my honours research last year on Aboriginal children in child protection and looking at why there's a massive overrepresentation of them. I really am passionate about Aboriginal children. I also work as an Aboriginal skills coach at a not-for-profit foster care company called Oz Child.

What does your role involve?

Once a week I pick up a kid from school who is Aboriginal and in foster care. And then I take them out in public somewhere, do something social and fun and sort of model pro-social behaviours and give them exposure to culture, because a lot of the kids aren't placed with Aboriginal carers.

What is your favourite part of your job?

As a PhD student, running around the park with a kid feels pretty good. It's the opposite of sitting at your desk or watching a lecture. The other part of my job is the team meetings we have - I'm one of six or seven people, so each child has an individual psychologist. Then there's a family psychologist who works with the family in times where they're trying to bring the child back into the family's care. Which I think is a key component that is often left out in Australia – working towards reunification. So my job has given me a little bit of faith in the child protection system and out of home care.

What does decolonising psychology mean to you, and why is it important?

I've only just started my PhD so I’m very early in my psychology career pathway. And so I'm learning about decolonizing psychology a little bit more than some of my peers. If they're not Aboriginal or Indigenous, they're not necessarily in that mindset, especially when a lot of people do quantitative research. My research is qualitative and culturally based. It’s really important because I’m so used to hearing my friends constantly putting their hand up and asking questions and giving answers, but we then had this lecture and my friends were all so uncomfortable because they're so new to the thought process. But they will have Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients – it’s just inevitable.

Do you see decolonisation as also challenging sexism in psychology including the lack of women authors, participants and researchers?

Apparently there is a less gender inequalities disparity amongst Indigenous people in psychology than non-Indigenous people, which I think is quite cool. I also just find that it's a lot easier for me to get female participants just in terms of my personal experience, women have been easier to recruit. It’s hard to get a strange man to come and openly talk to you about his mental health. It's just not the done thing in community.

Is decolonisation incorporated in your area of work? Who is usually leading those efforts?

With meeting places, you're supposed to be in a professional office or a private, secluded space. A lot of Indigenous psychologists actually meet with their clients out in community or out in nature, because that's just more comfortable for the client. I know one psychologist who sits in his car and the kids sort of just ride their bike up to the car and they talk to him through the window. That’s what the kids are comfortable with – they don’t want to come into a stuffy little office and sit with a closed door, not feeling safe. There are situations where psychologists basically say no to their employers and do things for the sake of their clients’ well-being. Things like refusing to use the WISC (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children) for Aboriginal children because it’s very much proven to be Western centric and prevents you from building rapport and getting trust from them.

How do you incorporate decolonisation into your work?/What does it look like?

There's so much about decolonising psychology that is so not straightforward. I remember a senior psychologist telling me about to decolonizing psychology and it kind breaks your brain. You think, “psychology is like all colonisation. If we decolonize it, is anything going to be left?” My PhD work is a continuation of the research I did for my honours thesis where I looked at the cultural safety of the community organisations because they still have to work in tandem with child protection. It’s not culturally safe for them. Yes, you're handing some of the power over to the community organisations, but you're still forcing them to basically play by the white man's rules, because the people from the community organisations still have to go to court and things like that for the children.

What are some of the challenges you face in decolonising your work?

On a very surface level, there's very little literature out there. Compared to my peers, who do research on sleep, for example, they've got all of their papers, and that's not really as much of a thing when it comes to decolonizing psychology. The other challenge is I find it really hard to talk to more established or senior researchers about this sort of stuff. I'm 23, so I've got 23 years of racism experience and I'm now two or so years into my very specific research into this area. So there is stuff where I do know more than these people. That being said, they've got their 45-50 years of knowing the world the way they know it, and so it's really hard for me to a challenge that when they've got so much seniority.

What are your hopes for the future of decolonising work in psychology?

I find that I can feel tense or nervous to talk to non-Indigenous people about it. If it was just more common and more understood that this is an ongoing process that we're going to do for like a couple of decades, it would make a difference. I would want to talk about it the way I'd talk about a risk assessment. “It might not be the most fun thing to do, but we do need to do it. And we are going to do it and it's not a problem. I'm not saying that this project is risky or that it's not possible. I'm just saying these are the things we need to consider.”

What role do you think organisations such as the APS and other professional psychology organisations should have in decolonising the psychology curriculum?

The APS made an apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in 2016, acknowledging their role in harm to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people over the past 100 or so years. And that is something now that is included in undergraduate psychology – it’s one of the core readings and it's brought up in lectures. That’s a really positive thing that they are doing. I think it's at least putting in people's minds that whether or not you think Australia's racist and Aboriginal people deserve rights, if you want to become a psychologist, the society you're working towards has not only said that it's wrong what's happened, but they have apologised. That's a huge thing that I'm really appreciative of.

If people took away just 1 point on decolonising the curriculum what would it be?

This conversation needs to be driven by the people who know what they're talking about and that are the ones who are actually impacted by it. You need to have cultural humility. Discomfort's going to come with that and you just have to tolerate it.

Can you please tell me a bit about yourself?

I'm an educational psychologist. I marvelled at the fact that I think I've been in education now for 30 years. That kind of shocks me a little bit because I don't know how I got here so quickly, but I've been an educational psychologist probably for about 18 years and I'm now principal educational psychologist in Stoke-on-Trent. I've been doing that and just coming into my third year of working with them and I've also just given up being the President of the Association of Black Psychologists. That's a small organisation that is based in the States and I'm now the secretary. That's been an eye opener for me in terms of the work that I do through an African centred lens. It's also opened up my understanding and my views about different perspectives of the same phenomenon. It makes it easier, I think, to see other people's perspectives;because I'm developing more of my own perspective really.

You mentioned that you work as an educational psychologist. What does your role involve?

So an educational psychologist is a psychologist who of course operates within the education system, really looking at barriers to learning. I think we've been quite pigeonholed to sit in that special needs area. Although I don't think this is what our profession wants, to almost be gatekeeping support for children in schools. The profession is a lot broader in terms of our sense of what it is that children have to engage, thrive and learn. It's about how you make schools inclusive places for all children, how you make sure all needs are met. So part of my role has always been about consulting in school settings. Thinking about what issues come up for staff around children meeting their needs and trying to use evidence based practice to inform what and how they teach children.

I think we've always been in that tussle with that dilemma - the idea of fixing the child or fixing the system. I think we now are more comfortable addressing it as a system issue. You know what needs to happen with the school? What needs to happen with the way we teach them, what we teach, and how we teach? Rather than trying to fix a child which is implied with the medical model [of disability].I would argue we're trying to create learning environments that accommodate the needs of children so that they can learn the best in the best way they can. So that to me has always been a bit of tension between the profession and those that we work with - parents, children, teachers. And you know, we talk about referral systems. Luckily, we don't use terms like 'clients', but it still has that kind of clinical sense. And so we've kind of been pigeonholed into the assessment of children and their special educational needs. You know, this perception that we only assess children and we tell everyone what's wrong with them and we tell them what the child needs. We give them the pill and off they go and then people get a little annoyed that it doesn't quite work out that way. But interactions are complex. I think people have been trying to gatekeep special schools at the moment, and people seem to have lost their way a little bit around inclusion and you know creating spaces where everyone can be valued and celebrated.

What is your favourite part of your job?

I think it's been interesting because obviously as a principal educational psychologist, I'm probably not working so directly with schools and SENCOs and children and families. I'm involved in developing systems that have an impact on how children are seen and talked about and considered. Seeing that actually, it's how we respond to that child and how we can impact change that matters. You kind of want all the systems we work in to move and change at the same time, and that's sometimes not possible. But within my team I've been able to help create a new perspective so we're talking differently about children and hopefully that will have an impact. I like it when I'm able to talk differently about children and shift the perspectives a little bit and offer alternatives to what's currently being used.

What does decolonising psychology mean to you, and why is it important?

So yeah, it's interesting because I got a link today about a paper that I wrote with some colleagues (a councillor, psychotherapist and I). It's just been published in the Caribbean Journal of Psychology. Actually, for African black psychologists, we need to kind of draw on African psychology because Western approaches and Western world views don't often overlay themselves exactly onto what's needed by the Black community, and Western expectations can actually maybe create more psychological issues than they help solve. So part of the paper that we did was looking at if we were to teach Western trained and African heritage therapists about black psychology; how would that impact their own practice? And then how is that received by the people they work with. It just had a really positive knock on effect. Sometimes it's about having a meal with family, sometimes it's about music, sometimes it's about connecting with nature and really about our sense of self. Decolonising psychology is about sharing space.There's a western way of thinking and understanding. There's an eastern way of thinking and understanding. There's an African way. There is a Native American way, and all of these ways are valid and valuable. All of these ways have something to teach us about who we are as human beings in this space. You know, we have to be more open to our understanding of spiritualness. It's not just about reading academic work, I think there's something about just making space for others.

Do you see decolonisation as also challenging sexism in psychology including the lack of women authors, participants and researchers?

Absolutely. The dominant narrative in academia continues to be white, middle class men. There needs to be space for women's voices. There needs to be space for younger people's voices. There needs to be space for disabled people. There needs to be space for children. There needs to be space for elders. It's not just about race. Well, as a black woman, there's something about being a woman that I've also got to navigate, you know if I had a disability then there's also something about that that would need to be navigated. Might my age now compared to when I was younger make me need a different space and a chance to have a voice?

Is decolonisation incorporated in your area of work? Who is usually leading those efforts?

I don't think we have been very good at centering the voice of young people. I don't think we've got a very good feedback loop as to how education is fit for purpose for children with special educational needs. I think we don't see enough adults with educational needs in the education system. We don't have enough voices advocating for people with disabilities. I'm really interested to know what young adults in particular think about the education system and what they've recently experienced. How are we facilitating or challenging what happens for those young people? We are challenging the concept of intelligence and what it means a lot more now. I think there is definitely still more work to do but we are becoming a more diverse community. These days, I don't feel so surprised when I see another educational psychologist of colour. I know I don't feel as isolated as I used to in the field, so that's a really good thing. I know that I've mentored and encouraged quite a few young people of Black and Asian heritage to kind of join the profession. So you know, I'm here doing my part for sure. I think young people like yourselves are not sitting back. You know you're challenging. You're saying this isn't good enough. We've gone through the 'Can you move over? Can we have a seat at the table?' type of conversation and now it's like 'no, actually we're dismantling this table. We're gonna build another table.' I think the dialogue is a lot more bombastic. You're saying 'We're not going anywhere and we've got something to say.'

How do you incorporate decolonisation into your work?/What does it look like?

So I think it's important to talk, isn't it? It's important to kind of share. It's important to feel able to have a voice. I don't think there are many people who have met me that wouldn't be able to say 'Ohh Michele doesn't have a view on that'. I bring facts and feelings. I think putting those together helps to make differences. I also truly believe in connectedness. There's something about understanding each other that aids learning. That doesn't mean that I tolerate willful ignorance. But I'm willing to work along and show that actually we can hold different viewpoints and still be respectful. I guess I'm saying I don't try to build a 'you're either with us or you're against us' type of scenario. I'm trying to see 'what's the consensus here', 'where do we agree and where do we diverge?' 'Does it have to be that way or are there other ways of how we knit it back together?'. Also, recognizing that we all are influenced by all kinds of things; politics, family, socialisation, school, you know, there's so many factors that impact us and our views. It's almost minimising, when we look at human beings with all the complexities of who we are and and and then try to put them into boxes. We have to live with the beauty of the diversity of who we are as people and welcome that. There's a South African quote, 'Sawubona' (I see you). It's about connecting with someone and welcoming them into your life.

What are some of the challenges you face in decolonising your work?

I think one of the challenges is just expanding and working on my understanding of it. When we talk about decolonising, it has a negative connotation in some ways. I try to explain what we want to people. We want space, and to be seen. We want to be acknowledged. I don't feel the need to say it has to be this way and you have to see it my way. I don't feel the need for that because actually I respect your way. I respect that middle aged white men have a way of looking at the world, but it's not my way. I just want the same respect.

I'm reading books and I'm listening to people who have probably been at this much longer than I have and have got other kinds of experiences. There's something in the Caribbean called Saturday soup, at least that's what my parents call it. It might have meat in it, might have dumplings or potatoes but by the time it's finished, we just call it Saturday soup and it's a mixture of everything. That's kind of how I see it. I think getting to that place where we can all have a bowl of Saturday soup and we can all just say how nice it is, that's what I want.

What are your hopes for the future of decolonising work in psychology?

I think we need to focus more on the wonderment about what it is to be a human being. I think we are so kind of caught up in thinking about the cerebral and frontal lobes that we're forgetting the emotional and the spiritual intuition of being human. I think we've got a lot to learn from the history of humanness. I think there's lots to be learned from original people who would not have had all the distractions and all of the gadgets and all of the pulsing electricity sitting around us. And who would have just found stars and learned about them and nature generally. And learned about who we are and how we need to be with each other. And I think there's something that is lost by trying to run away from that. We can dismiss it as naive and unsophisticated. Forgetting they built pyramids and they fashion jewellery out of what they found. It is innovative but I think we've lost a bit of that since we focus on books more than talking to each other.

What role do you think organisations such as the BPS or sections such as POWES should have in decolonising the psychology curriculum?

I do think we need to be more vocal. I see psychology as such a pivotal role in helping people understand the world around us. I'm thinking about social media and seeing people that are really influenced by what they see online. I think what we see online does sometimes pit us against each other and part of why this hasn't been challenged is because we have a Western model of putting things in boxes. I think we need to start challenging that model if we have the privilege to; which has to start with organisations such as the BPS.

If people took away just 1 point on decolonising the curriculum what would it be?

There's always space to give. There's always space to invite another perspective, because that's how you grow. I think we need to consider people's lived experiences and start to challenge the hierarchy we have when we do that. I think my main point would be to focus on human connectedness.

Can you please tell me a bit about yourself?

I’m a Principal Educational Psychologist, and the current Chair of the National Association of Principal Educational Psychologists (NAPEP). Before studying Psychology, I studied Behavioural Sciences at the University of South Wales. This included Social Anthropology which gave me an insight into how colonialism and oppression shapes our everyday lives, especially in education and healthcare. After this, I received a Postgraduate Certificate in Education and Masters in Science – Applied Educational and Child Psychology at the University of Southampton. I was one of the only non-white students there, but you can definitely see the diversification of training courses over the years.

You mentioned that you work as an educational psychologist. What does your role involve?

Educational psychologists consider the psychological and educational needs of children and young people (from birth to 25 years). Standardised tests which measure and track a child’s cognition and learning are reductionist and biased. Reuven Feuerstein’s theory of mediated learning experience and his development of ‘dynamic assessments’ is a good starting point for how to inform better alternatives. It’s extremely important to assess children’s social, emotional, and mental health needs. This starts at an early age as we assess how infants’ approach and interact with others. Part of this involves assessing their environments and thus adapting the theory of attachment.

It's also important to highlight the change in the language used over the years (e.g., ‘behaviour difficulties and deficit’ has changed to ‘social and emotional needs’). Positive and informative changes to medical language helps to destigmatise mental health and other support needs. Other professionals such as teachers and social workers also help with this, especially when working with the family unit as a whole and promoting the social model of inclusion. This is being successfully implemented through parenting programmes which encourage reciprocity and help caregivers to be more emotionally present.

Educational psychologists also focus on children’s medical and sensory needs. This includes removing barriers to education and helping children with conditions such as epilepsy, diabetes, sudden traumatic injuries, or visual and hearing impairments. We also work with specialist teachers, paediatricians, clinical psychologists, and psychiatrists.

What is your favourite part of your job?

Working with different groups of people. Like I said we work in a variety of ways but even just seeing different groups who aren’t always represented and learning more from them is a highlight. I think the most important thing is for every child to experience a sense of place and belonging in education. This starts with cultural awareness and competence and dismantling the hierarchical nature of academia.

One interesting project I worked on centred around supporting unaccompanied asylum seeker children. We learnt that most children’s priority was feeling welcome, connecting with others and knowing how to access services in the community they were now living in. I think we thought the first priority would be to give them therapy for the trauma they’d experienced, which is still important but a sense of belonging was clearly more valuable to them.

What does decolonising psychology mean to you, and why is it important?

When I worked with schools in the West Midlands, I developed anti-bullying programmes as well as initiatives to challenge patriarchal dynamics within the home. Recommendations included starting a sewing club for caregivers which would encourage those from all backgrounds to engage with each other, or to have ‘twin schools’ with other local schools with a more diverse student population which would show children that people from different backgrounds to them only lived down the road. I think it’s important as this was just a very basic first step but it clearly affected the children and meant that more of them knew they felt safe and like they belonged in that school and community.

Do you see decolonisation as also challenging sexism in psychology including the lack of women authors, participants and researchers?

Definitely and part of my work includes challenging the patriarchal nature in family units as well as in wider society. Also there are definitely more female psychology students now, which parallels women’s role domestically, as women often take on emotional labour in the home and on a much larger scale. As much as the increase in female students has a positive effect, it also means that male students lack role models, which disadvantages them, especially as men are less likely to discuss mental health or other important topics within their male social groups.

Is decolonisation incorporated in your area of work? Who is usually leading those efforts?

After higher education, I worked as an educational psychologist in the West Midlands and witnessed the local community begin to change and become more multicultural (around the late 1990s and early 2000s). I was often being asked to talk about racism to staff and students and to lead training about inclusion within schools in the area. I think now there’s more ethnic minorities in roles like mine, but we clearly take on the work of educating our more privileged and white counterparts.

How do you incorporate decolonisation into your work?/What does it look like?

I worked as a Senior Psychologist in the East Midlands, so I saw more mixed heritage families and mixed-race children who often struggled to fit in, especially if they were not living in an ethnically diverse area. I develop a lot of programmes and resources that make sure to consider whole family systems, not just the child. I’ve also led conferences about how to manage racist incidents and issues within schools where he centred lived experience and used restorative approaches.

Later, when working as a Principal Educational Psychologist in the West Midlands, I’d work more with the local council. Here my work focuses on implementing community cohesion (a national objective for the government at the time). This involved developing anti-bullying programmes within schools but also working with the council and police to work on wider issues.

One project was centred around raising awareness of preventing violent extremism and radicalisation with council leaders and the police. It’s extremely important to consider young children, ensuring that any resources and information was relayed in a way that they could relate to and understand. One way we did this was to run workshops and work with local theatre groups in education. This seemed to work well when talking about more serious topics such as extremist ideology and radicalisation to young children. We also made sure to actively consider minorities who felt out of place in schools and colleges and brought in community organisations who were able to give those young people a voice. One example is when students expressed their discomfort with security cameras outside their houses and in residential areas. The students were able to express this in front of the local police.

I now work in the East Midlands again but as a Principal Educational Psychologist and Chair of NAPEP. I co-deliver workshops and conferences where we discuss how to change (or at least challenge) current models. A key development that I have supported is the research into anti-discriminatory practice in the profession. We also empower Trainee Educational Psychologists (EPs) to incorporate decolonisation in their practice. For example, through the modification of assessment tools and learning outcomes on applied educational psychology training programmes to promote cultural awareness and competence.

What are some of the challenges you face in decolonising your work?

I’d say encouraging intersectionality especially when working with different minority groups. This is something we need to work on more. I’ve worked in a local authority in the South of England and one major difference was how there was a lot more acceptance of sexuality and gender diversity, but the community was not as multicultural. Many white communities would be more accepting of LGBTQ+ identities but not as educated about issues that global ethnic majorities face. More multicultural communities would also not be as educated about the LGBTQ+ community. I worked with families and schools to encourage talking about difficult topics by establishing support groups, as well as changing policies while working with the council.

An example of this work is a mentorship programme that was developed following the council’s recognition that young Black males were disproportionately involved in criminal activity. The mentoring programme that was launched has been successful for this demographic, however it remains a systemic issue. Concerns regarding training and safeguarding were a challenge. But the mentorship in places young people would normally go to (such as barbershops and youth groups) had real strengths too.

What are your hopes for the future of decolonising work in psychology?

I’d like psychology to be applied in a more meaningful way, to ensure that education is more accessible and not as institutional. I think anti-racist educational psychology services need to be everywhere, even if we are just seeing more of them in inner-city areas.

What role do you think organisations such as the BPS or sections such as POWES should have in decolonising the psychology curriculum?

I’ve previously worked with the BPS Ethics committee, and I think organisations like this can help by working with and listening to minorities. Representation is also extremely important, young people are inspired by seeing people who look like them (something I hope this series of interviews does for the readers and this one has done for me). It’s more than just having a ‘seat at the table’ and actually helping other people with your privilege. Actions speak louder than words.

If people took away just one point on decolonising the curriculum, what would it be?

Dismantling the hierarchy of knowledge. This can be done by using the information that’s available to you and talking to those around you – not just relying on the books taught to you. Humanistic and narrative approaches need to be valued more, especially as our current methods are reductionist.

Also, this is advice for you and anyone reading this but don’t be afraid to include civil rights or political discussions in curriculums.

Can you please tell me a bit about yourself?

I’m from Zambia, and I trained as a clinical psychologist in New Zealand and was very privileged to have training in traditional indigenous Maori principles on how to practice. I also recently started my PhD. Part of what I realised is that practitioners are burnt out and time poor. So with my PhD I’m looking at ways that we can leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to help people to practice in a more culturally responsive way without putting too much burden on the practitioner.

What does your role involve?

I started my own practice, Pola Practice, and its name comes from my matrilineal language of Bemba. Kupola is a verb: to restore, to recover, to heal. When I moved to Australia, I was looking for a therapist for myself and I wanted someone who was competent, but also someone who allowed for the sociopolitical factors that contribute to my experience of the world to be part of therapy. And that was surprisingly difficult to find, so I decided to be the change. As part of my work, I do administrative practice management and consult with universities to make their coursework for psychologists more culturally responsive.

What is your favourite part of your job?

It has to be the one-on-one clinical work. It's the reason I studied psychology; I was interested in people and it's the space where you see the most direct impact.

What does decolonising psychology mean to you, and why is it important?

When you think about psychology, you think of the forefathers of psychology who are old, white men of a particular social standing from very particular time. That is not representative of everyone, so it’s about questioning the legitimacy of the assumption that that perspective is universal. And then from there, we can keep the most useful parts and let go of the things that no longer make sense.

Do you see decolonisation as also challenging sexism in psychology including the lack of women authors, participants and researchers?

Absolutely. Psychometric testing is what comes to mind. So many psychological studies are normed on white, male, educated Americans, and that is exclusionary of psychology that is developing on the continent of Africa, for example, or in Asia. The culture that’s dominant in psychology is one that’s very patriarchal. Even though, for example, both my dad's and my mom's tribes are matrilineal, so it's actually not even the norm for me in my culture. But because Zambia is a British colony, the assumption is that our culture is patriarchal, which it would not have been outside of colonial history.

Is decolonisation incorporated in your area of work? Who is usually leading those efforts?

I think it's really hard to practice in a decolonial way when you're living in a British colony. Australia is a colony and the systems are still colonial systems. So it is really hard. But in Australia, we try to work in solidarity with First Nations, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elders and thinkers. In New Zealand, it’s about being led by Maori practitioners. We also acknowledge that as an African woman, I'm in Australia as a settler. We acknowledge my settler status and how it is complicated by the fact that I'm also part of a marginalised group, but still benefiting from colonial history.

How do you incorporate decolonisation into your work?/What does it look like?

The way we approach the work now is informed by a culturally responsive and intersectional model. Cultural responsivity means ensuring that the therapeutic interventions are culturally resonant for people. Intersectionality is about appreciating that people's cultural context is influenced by more than ethnic background, but by migrational history, gender, sexuality, religious background and all those things. The reason for developing this approach was out of necessity because I realised coming out of clinical training, that I didn't know how to work with someone that looked like myself. It was quite jarring because I realised that the assumption was that I would be a white student learning psychology, and that all my clients would be white.

What are some of the challenges you face in decolonising your work?

The system moves slowly in comparison to how people in practice might move. When you run a practice, you can make sure that the models used by practitioners are influenced by decolonial ideas, but we are still operating within a system that doesn't uphold decolonisation. For example, as an Australian citizen or permanent resident, you have access to 10 therapy sessions per year that are heavily rebated by the government, which is incredible. But that is only available if you're seeing a psychologist or a mental health social worker that is registered in a particular way. So there's still that hierarchical exclusionary practice around what counts as a good therapeutic intervention, which is assumed to be psychology, delivered by psychologists who are trained in a very specific, very Eurocentric way. Often counselling allows for more holistic perspectives on how to think about human behaviour and has more decolonial principles attached to it, whereas psychology tends to be based on a medical model. So the exclusion of counselling at the funding level indirectly communicates something about what kind of knowledge is valued.

What are your hopes for the future of decolonising work in psychology?

I'm definitely very hopeful. I love the field of psychology because it can be so inclusive of people's perspectives. And there's a lot of space to practice psychology; there are a lot of great things happening in psychology on the continent of Africa, in Asia, in indigenous communities in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Psychology can actually be quite inclusive as a practice when we stop assuming that one way of knowing – one epistemological framework – is superior to another.

What role do you think organisations such as the APS and other professional psychology organisations should have in decolonising the psychology curriculum?

I think they're the ones that have to push forward a shift in equitable ways of valuing different knowledges. If they say that other ways of knowing are valid, then I think they have more power to influence education, because they often determine how psychology is taught in universities.

If people took away just 1 point on decolonising the curriculum what would it be?

The one thing I would say – which is not mine, I got it from a Maori lecturer in New Zealand – is that if we create systems that serve the most marginalised person in society, those systems are better for everyone.

LinkedIn: Nasalifya Namwinga

Can you please tell me a bit about yourself?

I am a PhD researcher in Psychology with an interest specifically in Health Psychology. I like to have a biopsychosocial approach towards health and illness to understand the best way to support individuals with reaching their health goals or aiding individuals with chronic health conditions to have a good quality of life.

What does your role involve?

As a PhD researcher my main tasks are going through ethics, literature searching, setting up and conducting studies, analysing data, and writing up my studies for publication and towards my thesis. My work also includes meetings with my supervisors or any other relevant individuals and monthly peer connections with other psychology students. Furthermore, I take opportunities such as being a visiting lecturer, attending conferences, improving my qualitative and quantitative skills, and collaborating with other institutions/individuals on projects.

What is your favourite part of your job?

I enjoy the flexibility and time management of being a PhD researcher. Also, I enjoy the subject area of my PhD research which I think is needed to help give me the motivation to keep going as I generally have a passion for health/ethnic inequality.

What does decolonising psychology mean to you, and why is it important?

Decolonising psychology to me means that everyone should be taking a broader perspective on the content that is taught in the curriculum as well as how to engage a range of participants in research studies.

Do you see decolonisation as also challenging sexism in psychology including the lack of women authors, participants and researchers?

Indeed – decolonising in psychology includes various aspects such as having a range of ethnicity and cultural backgrounds, gender/sexual orientation and disabilities. I think it is important to make sure that those conducting research are conscious and reflective of their positionality and understand how to engage a range of participants with a range of intersecting social identities.

Is decolonisation incorporated in your area of work? Who is usually leading those efforts?

Yes, within my university decolonising psychology is incorporated as well as across the university. I know from when I first started university in 2015 there has been a shift in the content taught where it has become more representative. The psychology team have done a good job and are always working to improve decolonising the curriculum. The efforts are made by individual lecturers and psychology management teams. The university always encourages individuals to tailor content from their own experiences or new research that they are conducting.

How do you incorporate decolonisation into your work and what are some of the challenges you face?

In my current work I am not really limited as doing my PhD I have autonomy to discuss a range of things. Even down to not using the term “BAME (Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic)” and instead using the term “Culturally and Ethnically Diverse”. Also, due to the nature of my PhD I can bring in a range of perspectives, influences and the importance of intersectionality in understanding the barriers some individuals experience within accessing and receiving psychological support. Overall, I have not found it difficult to incorporate decolonisation into my work due to a large premise of my PhD allowing me to get a deeper insight of service users from a Black, Asian and Mixed background.

What are your hopes for the future of decolonising work in psychology?

That it becomes second nature for organisations, institutions, companies, and researchers to decolonise psychology content in their work. Having a range of work that is representative and inclusive is important and some individual’s need to not deem decolonisation as extra work, or harder to include. Everyone should be able to relate in some way when learning and decolonising the psychology curriculum will help aid this.

What role do you think organisations such as the BPS (British Psychological Society) and other professional psychology organisations should have in decolonising the psychology curriculum?

Firstly, I think that it is everyone’s role to be involved in decolonising the psychological curriculum although organisations such as BPS have an important role of acknowledging and showcasing the importance of decolonising. Working from the top-down enables smaller organisations and individuals to feel that they are being supported when trying to implement changes in their area. The bigger the organisation it can help set the precedent for everyone else to also get involved in.

If people took away just 1 point on decolonising the curriculum what would it be?

Stand out and diversify – a shift from the typical narratives we once were taught.

Psychology can be embedded in so many facets so having a holistic view and incorporating different viewpoints is salient.

Linkedin: Paige Clarke-Jeffers
Twitter: @Paige_CJ

Academic support

Anna Hood, PhD is a Lecturer in Psychology in the Manchester Centre for Health Psychology at the University of Manchester.

Her research focuses on the biological, psychological, and social challenges faced by young people living with pain.

She is currently collaborating on national and international projects and initiatives that work to understand pain from critical and structural perspectives and seeks to understand potential mechanisms for restoration and pathways to justice to eliminate pain inequities.

Her work has a particular focus on children and young adults with sickle cell disease and includes an anti-racism framework in her research to better inform psychological treatments and clinical care for young people living with pain.

Find out more about Anna's work.

Louisa Shirley is a clinical senior lecturer in psychology and a chartered clinical psychologist.

She is working with colleagues, students and interns on projects to understand more about the impact of a 'colonised' psychology curriculum on students, and about the challenges for staff to initiate change.

Her projects share the aim of working in partnership with students to provide recommendations for curriculum development.

Glen Jankowski is a senior lecturer in health and critical psychology and an associate staff member at Leeds Beckett University.

His research interests include medicalization, commercial determinants of health and body image.

He is part of a small group from the British Psychology of Women and Equalities Section that builds resources for curriculum decolonisation

Helen Malson is a senior supervisor on the Graduate Diploma in Psychology - Advanced at Monash University, Australia and a former Chair of the Psychology of Women and Equalities Section of the British Psychological Society.

Her research interests lie primarily in critical feminist approaches to gender, particularly in relation to eating disorders and, until moving to Australia in 2022, she was also a co-director of the Bristol Eating Disorders Health Integration Team.

Hannah Intezar is an Assistant Professor and the programme director for Psychology and Criminology at the University of Bradford.

She is also a Senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

She has a particular interest in qualitative dialogical epistemology and visual methods in psychology.

Hannah's current areas of research include self-identity, gender, public and private speech, digital societies, and enquiries into lived cultural experiences.

Hannah is also a committee member of The Psychology of Women and Equality Section (POWES) and The History and Philosophy of Psychology section (THPP).

Student support

Karabo is a PhD student in psychology at the University of Manchester, looking at inclusive health communication in medical education.

Her interests lie in education, medicine and psychology.

She is passionate about making healthcare and higher education more equitable and accessible for everyone.

Sohini is a psychology student at the University of Manchester and currently working on a project about decolonising the curriculum as part of her placement year.

She also chairs a campaign, 'The Butterfly Effect', which highlights the need for decolonisation within higher education.

Her campaigning work centres around ensuring activism is more accessible for students of colour and addressing issues from an intersectional point of view.

Former collaborators

Support for the initial LBU decolonizing psychology project was provided by:

Sarah Gillborn
Kirsty Bowe
Kevin Hylton
Rowan Sandle
Abdi Hassan
Nova Deighton-Smith
Leeds Beckett University
- Staff 'Race' Forum
- Centre for Psychological Research
- Centre for Teaching and Learning.

We are also very grateful to those LBU's students (placement or BSc) who have also helped build the archive including Kayla Jones, Millie Hylton, Carla House and Pierinna Di Luca Grand.

Funding

We are very grateful for funding. Helen Malson as Chair of The Psychology of Women and Equalities Section secured BPS reserves funding for revamping the website in 2021 and established a diversifying subcommittee to build a team to complete this revamp.

Previously the Centre for Psychological Research and Centre for Learning and Teaching from Leeds Beckett University provided initial funding and support between 2017-2023.

If you have any questions or suggestions of materials which can be added to this collection please contact [email protected].