New research centre will tackle racial inequality and racism

Creating greater racial equality and tackling racism is the core of a new research centre at the University of Northampton (UON).

The Centre for the Advancement of Racial Equality (CARE) will combine resources, research and knowledge and link experts and thought leaders together to tackle racial disparities.

CARE – which will launch at an official, free-to-attend for all event on 12 September (9:30am-3pm) – will do this by:

• Building a supportive, creative environment for research into issues of race, understanding racial disparities and how to address them.
• Develop the University’s archive of materials related to the study of race and racism (Searchlight*) and foster new archive projects around the histories of global ethnic majority communities.
• Build relationships with external organisations such as Northamptonshire Rights and Equalities Council.

As a research centre, CARE aims to become a focal point for partnerships with local, regional, and national organisations charged with promoting racial equality within society to link up to share and develop work in this area and promote its importance.

The launch event will showcase the University’s Changemaker Award-winning Cultural Integration Workshops** which tackle the award gap in Higher Education, where there is disparity in how the work and attainment of BAME students is recognised and rewarded.

The launch event will also feature an interview with the Vice Chancellor, Professor Anne-Marie Kilday about equality in higher education, and a showcase of UON’s Extreme Right Aware workshops for the police, teachers, and anti-racism organisations.

The keynote talk will be from Professor Kalwant Bhopal from the University of Birmingham, who will speak about the challenges research centres such as CARE must meet.

Paul Jackson – Professor in the History of Radicalism and Extremism – co-leads CARE with Professor of Computer Engineering Michael Opoku Agyeman and sums up their thoughts about why the centre is needed: “The University of Northampton has a truly impressive range of researchers who are expert in many aspects of race and racial inequality, covering subjects such as Education, Law, History and Journalism, to name a few.

“We are also lucky to have at the University’s Global Ethnic Majority (GEM) Network, which has been a very positive development and highlights the need for more work to be done.

“The Centre for the Advancement of Racial Equality will build on these cultures, and we hope it will help allow the university to place itself at the heart of debates over how to achieve a more equal society. We want the launch for this new research centre to attract other researchers at the University to join us. If you want to find out more about the centre, come along.”

To attend the launch event, please book using Eventbrite.

*Find out more about the Searchlight Archive.

**The workshops were led by Senior Lecturer in Acting and Drama Gemma Boaden and Professor of Computer Engineering Michael Opoku Agyeman. More information can be found on our website.