Dr Gurnam Singh
Freelance activist, citizen journalist, researcher, writer, educator and social worker
Morning Keynote
Dr Gurnam Singh
Keynote speaker
This keynote presentation will make the case for a complete reframing of our understanding of diversity through a decolonial lens. The concept of diversity has been seen as a soft option that sidesteps the question of structural and systemic racism, such as was recently highlighted in the Baroness Casey review of the Metropolitan Police Service. Whilst there is merit in this criticism, this is not because diversity is unimportant, but because but we have failed to truly appreciate the importance of diversity to, not only the viability of institutions such as Huddersfield University, but society and humanity more generally. This will require a critique of distorted conceptions of human diversity, as in the case of cultural deficit modelling, an expanded appreciation of the relationship between diversity and complex problems, such as differential attainment and a willingness to develop new and novel solutions.