Researching Racialised Bodies in Higher Education: From Statistics to Storytelling

Quantitative data, particularly in the form of statistics measuring student attainment along racial/ethnic lines, has been the predominant evidence base for law and policymaking in relation to higher education institutions tackling racial inequalities in the sector. In challenging the rendering of racialised bodies in the academy into ‘stats’, I instead explore a qualitative approach foregrounding racialised experiences, their complexities, nuances and intersections, often left absent or flattened when using quantitative methodologies. I draw on counter-storytelling as a form of experiential and embodied knowledge production as developed through critical race theory relating to education, as well as in decolonial studies’ approaches to research. Working with counter-storytelling—as a method for researching the experiences of racialised student and staff bodies—builds on a tradition of transmitting knowledge that has already established creative ways to ethically co-produce, analyse, and understand socio-economic—including educational—inequalities. This creative and ethical approach takes us beyond the academic strictures and limitations—including form—of the ‘European/Western canon’ whilst also exposing its power in knowledge production. Understanding and working within this frame can loosen the powerful grip of this canon and its modern quantitative forms, by making space for racialised bodies to be able to ‘speak’ about themselves.