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A report into university reading lists brings the decolonising of curriculums back on the agenda

Today, University College London publishes research that suggests that the reading lists drawn up by universities are nowhere near demographically representative of their student bodies, with white, male and Eurocentric viewpoints overrepresented.

The word “suggests” is significant here, given that the study—published in the Higher Education Journal—only looks at two reading lists, one of which contained authors of 144 social science papers, and the other 146 authors of science papers. It is hardly exhaustive, but the findings confirm what most will already suspect, and the paper offers a glimpse at the make-up of such lists.