Black bodies on cobbled streets - Understanding the experiences of Black British students at elite universities in the UK

Black British (including Black multi-ethnic students) are underrepresented at elite
higher education institutions in the UK, which remain fairly ethnically homogenous.
Yet increasing media attention spotlights the racism on campus. There is a paucity
of sociological research focused on the experiences of Black British students at elite
higher education institutions, although there has been a growth in this area of study.
The proposed research will thus aim platform the voices and experiences of Black
British students and critically explore the institutional and cultural mechanisms that
frame their university experience. The research aims to understand and explore the
experiences of Black British students at elite, ethnically homogenous, universities,
through narrative and spatial lenses. Qualitative methods will be employed to do
this. Narrative interviews will explore their experiences through the themes of
hostility and resilience, as outlined in existing literature, with a focus on
understanding the heterogeneity of the Black British student experience at elite
universities. It will also explore perceptions of allyship. This will be supplemented
with ethnographic walking interviews, which will seek to understand how Black
British students navigate the elite university environment. These methods will be
enriched by an analytical autoethnography, to better address my positionality as a
Black British student studying at an elite university, researching Black British
students studying at elite universities. The proposed research is not only timely, in
the wake of the 2020 BLM movement, but also has the ability to be representative
of pledges made by the academy in regard to decolonising.