Organised by the BA Social Sciences Society and programme leaders, the event was designed to platform the social justice work of BASS staff and students, as well as bring together members of the community past and present. There were eight core exhibits, all centred on themes of social justice, anti-racism, decolonisation, community-building and more.
These exhibits included:
- Counter-Canon Challenge (Professor Yasmin Gunaratnam with Goldsmiths Racialised Postgraduate Network)
- Qualitative Research with Chinese International Students (Professor Yasmin Gunaratnam and Dr Xu Liu)
- The new Social Sciences Society (Leadership: Ellie Jennings, Edward Peasgood, and Abeer Kashif)
- Student Projects from the Community-Engaged Learning Module: 1) American Summer Camp Instructor by Nashita Karim, 2) Event Assistant in the Theatre Industry by Ellie Jennings, 3) Youth Worker co-leading the transformation of a youth centre by Edward Peasgood, and 4) Intern in an MP’s parliamentary office by Louis Saha.
- Student/Staff Zines on 1) Growing Group Care (an inter-departmental project with Dr Pippa Sterk, Louis Saha, and Ellie Jennings from BASS), 2) the Difficulty of Doing Things Differently on BASS (Dr Pippa Sterk with a group of BASS students), 3) How to Survive a World on Fire – a guide to finding community, hope, and justice (linked to the Environment and Society module – by Aditi Banerjee), and 4) Participatory Action Research and Anti-Racist Education (linked to the Race, Ethnicity, and Society module – by Amon Chua Tze Wei).
- Alumni Dissertation Projects: Raza Hussain (on Queer British Muslims), Tara Prakesh (on the Racial Diversity Gap in Women’s Football in England), Iman Chala (on the Political Potential of Rave), and Caitlin Murphy (on Alternative Conceptions of Nature in Post-Apartheid Johannesburg).
- The Social Change Lab module (led by Dr Farhan Samanani) and it’s (successful) 2024 campaign work with Southbank employees for the Living Wage. Also celebrated was this work being shortlisted for a Times Higher Education Awards.
- Students’ Activist Work: at Pride London (Ellie Jennings), with the Advocacy Academy (Aditi Banerjee and Amon Chua Tze Wei), calling for more context diversity in learning materials at King’s (Uresa Sha and Zhixin Lin), and the protests for Palestine.
At the event, attendees were also able to engage in interactive exhibits exploring questions such as ‘What’s a change you’d like to see?’, highlighting the significance of collaboration and participatory practice on the programme aimed at mobilising collective action and change.
Dr Clare Coultas, Programme Director of the BA Social Sciences, commented on the event:
