This symposium is hosted by the Faculty of English, and brings together scholars, artists, and educators whose work actively transforms pedagogy.
When: May 21, 10:00 – 15:30
Where: Faculty of English (GR06/07), University of Cambridge, 9 West Road, CB3 9DP
How can marginal practices reshape teaching, learning, and community in the university?
Grounded in queer theory, Black studies, and disability justice, this daylong symposium brings together scholars, artists, and educators whose work actively transforms pedagogy. From sensory and access-based approaches shaped by disability and neurodivergence; to trans and community-rooted pedagogies that blur the boundary between classroom and neighbourhood; to anti-racist approaches that transform institutional spaces into sites of creativity, care, and world-building.
Through panels and discussion, participants will engage practices as they are lived and shaped within institutions, challenging exclusion and domination. Building on the history of student movements such as the 2017 decolonising the university campaigns, the symposium asks how teaching and scholarship can be liberated and democratised today.
The symposium will feature Harsha Balasubramanian, Lola Olufemi, Mijke van der Drift and Mónica Moreno Figueroa. The event also includes a framing conversation for pre-listening, recorded as a podcast between Mijke and Jay Bernard, which can be accessed here. The podcast is a discussion of Horace Ové’s film about a meeting between James Baldwin and West Indian students that took place in 1960s London, which Mijke and Jay use as a meditation on radical encounters in the university, both then and now.
Sponsored by Cambridge English EDI and co-sponsored by the Global Racisms Institute for Social Transformation, Cambridge.
Speakers
Harshadha (Harsha) Balasubramanian is an anthropologist researching the labour of making immersive media accessible to disability communities. She is an Associate Lecturer at the Royal College of Art and a consultant working to embed digital access in galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. Outputs from her research include a patented prototype for non-visual virtual reality access, co-creative research methods, and workshops on designing with disability justice principles. At RCA, Harsha delivers lectures, workshops, and seminars that critically explore community-facing arts practice in the digital age, addressing collaboration ethics, immersive media, AI in creativity, and participatory research methodologies.
Jay Bernard is an interdisciplinary writer and artist from London whose work is rooted in sound, poetry and social history. Jay is currently Judith E Wilson fellow in poetry at the University of Cambridge and co-author of Transitions (MACK, 2026) a dialogue on literature and the crisis of the present.
Lola Olufemi is a black feminist writer and researcher from London. She is a lecturer in Fine Art Critical Studies at Goldsmiths University. Her work focuses on the utility of the political imagination in the textual and visual cultures of radical social movements, examining the role cultural production plays in materialist resistance and collective conceptualisations of futurity. She is author of Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power (Pluto Press, 2020), Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (Hajar Press, 2021), the forthcoming Against Literature (Peninsula Press, 2026) and a member of ‘bare minimum’, an interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective. She occasionally curates and is a member of the organising team at the Feminist Library based in Peckham.
Mijke van der Drift works on transfeminist and anti-imperial ethics through philosophies of movement, collective action, and counter-cultural production. This work takes the form of writings, performances, and sound pieces, often by way of inter-disciplinary collaborations. Mijke co-authored with Nat Raha Trans Femme Futures (Pluto 2024). Mijke published in Alternatives, Social Text, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, with Cambridge University Press, and many other outlets. Mijke is Tutor (Research) at the Royal College of Art, London and is co-chair of its Union branch. Mijke is a founding member of Red Forest, together with Diana McCarty, David Muñoz Alcántara, and Oleksiy Radinsky. Red Forest made in 2021 Sambatas Stagings in Kyiv, and curated in 2022 the German Pavilion at the 23rd Milano Triennale, and in 2023 contributed to the Helsinki Biennale. Red Forest is supported in 2023-2026 by the Kone Foundation, Finland for their research “Energy-Matters in the context of war. Neo-extractivism, fossil fascism, and the post-national question.”
Mónica G. Moreno Figueroa is a Black-mestiza, Mexican-British, woman, Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. She is also a Fellow in Social Sciences at Downing College, Cambridge. Her research focuses on the intersectional lived experience of ‘race’ and racism in Mexico and Latin America; antiracism and academic-based impact; feminist theory, intersectionality and racism. She is an expert in qualitative research methods, visual methodologies and thrives in interdisciplinary collaborations. She is now learning all about design thinking for social transformation. Mónica is currently leading the development of the Global Racisms Institute for Social Transformation (GRIST), established with seed funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Through a series of “experiments”, she and the team are shaping the Institute’s vision and methodology, foregrounding curiosity, collaboration and transformation to generate innovative approaches to studying global racisms and translating research into action-oriented dialogues and practices.