Bradbury’s Critical Race Theory (CRT) Framework for education policy analysis (2020) is a prescient call to interrogate how policies in higher education reinforce racial inequalities. By asking, “How do white people gain?”, “How does this disadvantage minoritised groups?”, and “How does this maintain white dominance?” (p. 247), we are encouraged to examine who benefits and who is marginalised. Applying this framework, I analysed UAL’s new hiring policies implemented in 2025.
Effective from March 2025, UAL introduced a policy requiring all requests for hiring Visiting Lecturers to go through a newly established Staffing Committee. The committee comprises Karen Stanton (Interim President), Heather Francis (COO), and Roni Brown (Deputy Vice-Chancellor), with advisors Karen Gooday (Director of People and Culture) and Alex Peacock (Finance Director) (UAL, 2025a). All are white senior managers. This group now holds sole authority to approve or reject new hires across the university.
Requests are submitted via an online form requiring rationale, dates, budget code, and budget holder—but no information regarding race, gender, or disability. This directly contradicts UAL’s Anti-Racism Action Plan (2021), which pledged to “understand, review, and reform… processes to capture more comprehensive data on Visiting Lecturers” (p. 7).
The committee also oversees requests for salary increases, job evaluations, and changes in contracted hours. Without mechanisms to track or address race and intersectionality, it’s difficult to see how UAL will meet its pledge to audit and act on ethnicity pay gap data (UAL, 2021). Using Bradbury’s framework, we must ask: does this policy maintain white dominance and disadvantage minoritised Visiting Lecturers? Arguably yes—although this short blogpost does not allow a full exploration of how.
Garrett’s essay (2024) on how racism shapes academic careers resonated deeply. I identify as mixed race—British and Colombian—with Colombian heritage that includes Indigenous, Afro-Latin, and European ancestry. I moved to the UK at 16 and was often mocked by peers who asked if I lived in huts or trafficked cocaine. Assimilating into a white, Eurocentric identity helped me progress academically through to PhD level. Garrett notes how mixed-race academics often feel compelled to give up parts of themselves to fit in (p. 6). Upon entering university, I felt pressured to emphasise my British identity to be read as a ‘home’ student and avoid international fees. Only later did I realise I had the right to claim both home fee status and dual heritage. This demonstrates how race intersects with fee status.
Now, post-PhD and after five years at UAL, I still await placement on an Early Career Researcher (ECR) pathway—despite my contributions to research and teaching. UAL’s updated Race Equality Charter Action Plan (2025b, p. 11) acknowledges this systemic issue, noting the risk that BAME postdoctoral staff are overlooked for ECR pathways. This, combined with centralised hiring oversight lacking intersectional safeguards, suggests that well-meaning policy changes may inadvertently entrench inequality without anti-racist accountability.
In my role as a Course Leader with hiring responsibilities and as a line manager to academic staff, I plan to use the CRT framework to critically reflect on UAL’s new policies and to support BAME Visiting Lecturers and contractual staff in securing fair pay and career progression.
References
Bradbury, A., 2020. A critical race theory framework for education policy analysis: The case of bilingual learners and assessment policy in England. Race Ethnicity and Education, 23(2), pp.241-260.
Garrett, R. (2024) ‘Racism shapes careers: career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education’. Globalisation, Societies and Education. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2024.2307886.
Orr, J. (2022) Revealed: The charity turning UK universities woke. The Telegraph [Online]. YouTube. 5 August. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRM6vOPTjuU (accessed on 19/06/25).
Sadiq, A. (2023) Diversity, equity & inclusion: Learning how to get it right. TEDx [Online]. YouTube. 2 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR4wz1b54hw (accessed on 19/06/25).
UAL (2021) UAL anti-racism action plan summary. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/296537/UAL-Anti-racism-action-plan-summary-2021.pdf (accessed on 19/06/25).
UAL (2025a) Financial controls 2025: Staffing Committee. Available at https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/sites/explore/SitePage/260545/staffing-committee-faqs (accessed on 21/06/25).
UAL (2025b) Race Equality Charter Action Plan. Available at https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/documents/sppreview/9bff08d7-69e0-4b1b-9e29-370b0eb01791 (accessed on 21/06/25).