Abdias Nascimento Conference offers transnational perspectives on anti-racist education
The first conference to emerge from a unique Brazil-UK student partnership has taken place in Cambridge, showcasing new research offering a transnational perspective on how education can challenge racial inequalities.
The Abdias Nascimento Conference was held earlier this week at the Faculty of Education, and featured presentations by the first cohort of a three-year research and exchange programme, funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Education’s Abdias Nascimento Academic Development Programme.
Through this partnership, postgraduates from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the State University of Bahia undertake visiting studentships in Cambridge.
The initiative supports research exploring the transnational and historical dimensions of racial inequalities, and how education both shapes, but can also be used to challenge, structural racism. The fellowships are open to groups who have traditionally been underrepresented in the academic community: Black and Indigenous students, neurodiverse students and those with disabilities.
The two-day conference, ‘Anti-racist Education in Transnational Perspective,’ was designed and led by the visiting students, together with students at the Faculty of Education, and profiled the work of these early career researchers. It was conducted in both English and Portuguese and was streamed online so that it could also be viewed in Brazil, or anywhere else in the world.
It combined workshops, panel discussions and arts-based activities, with a keynote from Carina Oliveira, a Pataxó educator, librarian, and scholar of ethnic-racial relations and Indigenous literature in Brazilian education.
“Based on my experience as an Indigenous woman and the collective experience of the 'Transnational Antiracism in Education' project, I sought to open the conference in dialogue with Indigenous and Black intellectuals – who, for a long time, through their experiences, struggles and epistemologies, have not been fully acknowledged as such,” Carina said.
“Faced with a territory that symbolically crosses us, with the urgency and the right to plural narratives, confluence becomes both a political movement and a possibility of reconnecting with a poetics that restores the power of life.”
The conference brought together a range of perspectives on anti-racist education. Some of the presentations explored how anti-racist ideas operate, or fail to operate, within the curriculum, and how they can be integrated into specific subject areas such as history and mathematics. Another prevailing theme was strategies for challenging the dominance of Western perspectives in education, and for ensuring that systems instead reflect the experiences and viewpoints of the majority of the world’s population.
Other sessions addressed the intersections of race with socio-economic status and gender. Black identity and Black movements – past and present – were also a point of focus. And alongside conventional talks, the role of the arts in anti-racist awareness and protest was represented in workshops dedicated to music and dance.
Tributes were paid to two scholars whose work has inspired many of the early career researchers involved. The event itself honoured the life of Abdias do Nascimento, the eminent Black Brazilian artist, activist and intellectual, who dedicated his career to championing Black civil and human rights in Brazil and the United States. Nascimento, who was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, also co-founded the Afro-Brazilian Studies and Research Institute. The Brazilian Ministry of Education's Academic Development Programme, which supports 37 exchange programmes around the world, is named after him. The conference featured a video message from his widow, Elisa Larkin Nascimento, sending the participants her encouragement and good wishes.
At the end of the conference, students also paid an emotional tribute to the British sociologist, Professor Michael Burawoy, who was tragically killed in an accident earlier this month at the age of 77.
"Events like this create new types of encounters, on different levels, that would not otherwise be taking place in universities like ours"
Anna Maria Del Fiorentino, a British-Brazilian PhD student at Cambridge and one of several Cambridge doctoral researchers who has been working closely with the visiting students, described the exchange programme as creating new types of transnational spaces in Cambridge. Quoting the programme’s co-coordinator, Dr Amilcar Pereira, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, she characterised the anti-racist struggle it represents as “changing culture with culture”. The exchange scheme, she argued, was part of a process of actively producing new culture—one that, in turn, educates and fosters further transformation within Cambridge.
“As a British-Brazilian student at Cambridge, I see this exchange programme as a historical milestone and feel empowered by this initiative," she said. “It’s so important that we forge spaces like this in Cambridge.
“Events like this create new types of encounters, on different levels, that would not otherwise be taking place in universities like ours. They bring about academic conversations through which people hear different accents, other languages, and take notice of different lived experiences and perspectives. A huge amount of connection and solidarity can grow from that.”
Brazilian visiting student Odara Dias Philomena, from the programme, said: "The University of Cambridge played a significant role in the consolidation of scientific racism. In light of this, I believe that hosting the conference is part of the process of challenging the racial debate within this space. It also highlights how racialised students produce knowledge through their experiences, cultures, and struggles, thereby challenging hegemony and broadening the horizons of knowledge for the entire academic community."
Mateus Ferreira Martins de Jesus, also a visiting scholar from the programme said: “The Abdias Nascimento Conference affirms the process of change that is gradually taking place. Because we are here— with our bodies, research, stories, and affections — we are part of the change.”
The event was supported by the Brazilian Ministry of Education and the Faculty of Education.
Image: Joe Cotton and Andrew Borkett
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