Black British undergraduate students' academic and social experiences while studying English and or History at Russell Group universities

Elite institutions like Oxford University invest finances and resources into widening participation (Bradshaw, 2018; Bhopal, 2018). However, David Lammy challenges
Oxbridge and their inability to instate true ethnic and cultural diversity within their institutions fast enough. Given that only 1.5% of the places offered to students were
given to Black students, Lammy dubbed the fact that some Oxbridge colleges have given only one place, if at all, to a Black student in the last five years, a 'social
apartheid', as the college cohorts did not reflect racial diversity in society (Adams and Bengsston, 2017; Shilliam, 2018).In addition to elite universities 'failure to offer places
to Black students, an issue regarding the coloniality of the university, that constantly confronts the Black students who do attend these universities, arises. In 2016,
students actively challenged the institutional racism that resides in establishments for higher education. BAME undergraduate students formed the Rhodes Must Fall Oxford
(RMFO) campaign, which had a triple pronged agenda to decolonise iconography, curriculum and representation within the university of Oxford (Gebrial, 2018). Looking
more specifically at campaigns concerning the content in the English curriculum, a 20-minute video 'Why is My Curriculum White?', made by University College London
(UCL) students, explicitly forced the universities to reflect on the role colonialism has played in shaping the curriculums we have access to (Hussain, 2015). While Lola
Olufemi's letter (2017), co-signed by over 100 people, to Cambridge University, requested a decolonisation of the course and assessment content. Ultimately, a call
for the decolonisation of the curriculum in the university is not a new phenomenon (Gebrial, 2018), but recently it has gained power among students, which makes this a
key time to examine their experiences further. Following Kehinde Andrews' innovative 'Black Studies' course offered at a post '92 institution (the only and first course of this
kind in the UK), he suggests that he does not think that elite universities would ever engage in offering a 'Black Studies' course, because of the 'entrenched conservatism
within those hallowed walls' (2018, p. 133). This scepticism, although understandable, seems defeatist; it is important to continue to examine, challenge and expose the
curriculum and pedagogic provision at these elite institutions to urge them to reflect on what I would frame as the necessity for, and advantages of, decolonising the
curriculum. In light of this backdrop, the purpose of this DPhil project is to engage with how second year Black British undergraduate students perceive their English
curriculums and their experience of studying English at the university, in order to gain some clarity on the fundamental features of the undergraduate English course across
six elite universities. To conduct this research, I intend to utilise semi-structured interviews with second year Black British students, to build a deepened understanding
of their undergraduate experience studying English at University and how this may contribute to their understanding of decolonisation.