Hannah's PGCert blog

Reading Rhianna Garrett’s article Racism Shapes Careers (2024) leads me to reflect on my privilege as a white PhD student and associate lecturer at UAL. Early on, the article provides statistics showing just how poor representation of people of colour is in professorships in UK HE institutions (Garrett, 2024, p.1), but describes intersectional identities and how these are effectively erased in the institution. Her research, rooted in Critical Race Theory and intersectionality, considers how racialised PhD students’ experiences in UK academia affects how they plan and imagine their future career pathways.

Whilst reading, I was reminded of a class discussion related to Sara Ahmed’s On Being Included, where she writes about institutions using DEI to present an image of progress while maintaining the same power structures. Garrett’s participants speak of being made hypervisible for their difference while feeling unsupported, even erased. Our class discussed how decolonising the curriculum must be in tandem with the deeper work of changing norms and values.

In my field of sound studies, there has been a shift only in the past ten years or so, towards engaging more critically with race. Jennifer Stoever’s The Sonic Color Line (2016) exposes how white listening habits define who gets heard and how. Dylan Robinson’s Hungry Listening (2020) challenges settler-colonial frameworks in music and academia, asking how we might listen differently. These works have shaped how I teach and think about our subject—which appeared for many decades to be more interested in listening to birdsong than to people in struggle. These authors also challenge me to confront the whiteness of the spaces I help sustain.

Garrett’s participants described academia as a space that demanded assimilation—a place where being racialised, working-class, disabled, or neurodivergent meant not being fully seen or supported. Though I’ve experienced a normal amount of imposer syndrome in returning to academia, I’ve benefited from assumptions of belonging. I haven’t had to doubt whether my presence would be read as ‘qualified’ or ‘professional’. This advantage is uncomfortable to hold, but necessary to name.

I also think about mentorship. Garrett shows how racialised PhDs rely on mentors who understand their experiences—yet these mentors are often undervalued and overworked. How do we avoid placing all the responsibility for change on those already carrying the most weight? What does meaningful solidarity look like from someone like me, who hasn’t had to fight to be included?

I had to put this to the test recently, as a fellow associate lecturer made a public accusation of racism towards the course leadership. She felt she was being particularly silenced on the topic of Palestine solidarity on account of her race. As an employee of UAL I knew that there are processes for such complaints that are intended to impartially investigate in such situations. But having been in grievance procedures myself elsewhere in the past, I know the huge weight of having to gather evidence, only to have it dismissed by a committee that was likely always going to serve its institutional master. I offered solidarity to my colleague in the form of an outreach email, which she responded positively to, though it felt a bit weak on my part. 

I don’t have any answers to offer, just questions I keep returning to: What does it really mean to listen? Can inclusion mean more than assimilation? How do we open up space for students and colleagues to be fully present—without carrying the burden of having to fight for institutional change?

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Refs:

Ahmed, S. (2012) On being included: Racism and diversity in institutional life. In On being included. Duke University Press.

Garrett, R. (2024) ‘Racism shapes careers: career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education’. Globalisation, Societies and Education, pp.1–15. 

Robinson, D. (2020) Hungry listening: Resonant theory for Indigenous sound studies. U of Minnesota Press

Stoever, J. (2016) The sonic color line: Race and the cultural politics of listening (Vol. 17). NYU Press.

Introduction

This report reflects on my intervention design for the Inclusive Practices unit: a recurring drop-in Listening Group for staff and students at UAL. Rooted in my positionality as a sound artist, educator, and PhD researcher, the intervention explores listening as a radical, inclusive, and justice-oriented practice.

As both a student and a teacher, I am acutely aware of how structures within higher education valorise quick thinking, articulate speech, and confident vocal participation. These expectations, often framed as neutral, I’ve observed to perpetuate exclusion—particularly for those with English as a second language, neurodivergent or shy/anxious students.

Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s concept of the ‘feminist ear’ (2022) and Brandon LaBelle’s acoustic justice (2021), my intervention seeks to value slow learning through listening—not as a passive act but as a generative, participatory one. My aim is to create a space where listening itself becomes a valid form of academic and social contribution, challenging hierarchies that privilege voice, confidence, and fluency over presence, participation and reflection.

Context

I teach across the BA and MA Sound Arts courses at LCC. These cohorts are highly international, linguistically diverse, and include a high percentage of neurodiverse students. Students frequently navigate layered identities, including disability, queerness, and racialised experience—contexts that make the question of who is heard and how they are heard particularly urgent.

The department has a history of prestigious and long-running extra-curricular activities, well-attended by staff and students, including a laptop orchestra and experimental choir. Both projects ended recently due to staff changes. The Listening Group is intended as a new extra-curricular intervention: open, accessible, and cross-hierarchical, welcoming both students and staff. The turn in sound studies towards naming listening modes, made evident in the recent Listening Together symposium (LCC, 2025) also points towards this subject being timely.

Listening Group sessions will follow a simple structure: each begins with a shared listening score (inspired by Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening practice), practiced together followed by reflective activities with options for sonic, graphic or gestural responses. The invitation is not just to attend to what we listen to, but how we listen, surfacing dynamics of voice, power, silence, and positionality. Participation does not require speaking—silent presence is valued.

As a PhD researcher as well as an associate lecturer, I have access to support in the department, small amounts of funding, and a supportive peer network of other postgrad students to help sustain the intervention.

Inclusive Learning

My intervention is shaped by several interrelated theories of inclusive practice, with a focus on intersectionality, epistemic justice, and aural diversity.

In The Importance and Difficulties of Listening Skill (Gultom, Utari, & Rahmawati, 2023), listening is framed as a skill to be acquired. This aligns with dominant pedagogic narratives that treat activities as measurable, perfectible, and neutral. However, this view assumes an ‘ideal listener’ despite the reality that listening is always situated, shaped by identity, culture, and embodied experience. In contrast, Drever and Hugill’s Aural Diversity (2022) reframes listening as plural and ever-changing, while for Lipari, in her seminar Listening, Thinking, Being (2014) listening is relational.

Harris, in Embracing the Silence (2022), critiques pedagogies that prioritise orality and speed. Her analysis of introverted learners in online classrooms resonated with my own frustrations, particularly in co-teaching situations with 60 students to a classroom, where students are expected to articulate on the spot in front of peers—when quiet reflection might be more pedagogically valuable to them and those with additional needs are least likely to benefit. Harris cites Dana Weeks (2018): ‘Listening without anticipating and articulating an immediate response provides space for understanding ideas, perspectives, and experiences that may differ from one’s own’. This idea is at the heart of my intervention.

Listening here is not treated as a skill to master, but as a practice to cultivate, one that acknowledges epistemic injustice (Rekis, 2023) in who is seen as a ‘knower’ and how knowledge is conveyed. As I reflected in the session design, listening is not just auditory, but embodied, affective, and shaped by access needs, sensory processing, and cultural orientation. The intervention assumes no ‘normal’ listener.

While Freire is frequently cited in HE pedagogy, his pedagogical model where facilitators listen deeply before engaging communities (Freire, 1970) is rarely embedded. Within this intervention, I begin by positioning myself as facilitator—but not expert. I hope to become a co-learner in the sessions, creating opportunities for group members to take on facilitation roles. My project seeks to offer a quiet, persistent intervention at the margins—low-barrier and slow-burning, valuing listening practice with faith in its ability to create cultural shifts over time.

Reflection

The listening group emerged from my frustration with facilitating seminars within conditions which appeared to discourage students from speaking – such as large class sizes, poor classroom acoustics and looming assessments. I noticed that focus on speaking exacerbated divides between native-English-speaking and international students. Further, I see increasing numbers of students disengage from class discussion, looking at phones rather than listening. I want to show the value of listening and encourage this as a practice. 

My tutor offered valuable feedback on the intervention, challenging me to consider the potential outcomes from the group. What might feasibly result from this intervention? This encouraged me to think not just in the short term, of classroom dynamics, but also about the potential for new understandings between students and staff, and a slow shift where listening is a signal of care, respect and curiosity – traits I believe to be just as valuable as artistic skill. Victor also asked about my workload, which made me consider how the project could last beyond my own involvement – could students eventually facilitate it? He also encouraged me to consider how learning could be evidenced. Though at first this seemed counter to my proposal for a group that does not focus on outcomes, I can see the value in documenting aspects of the group work, perhaps through a Padlet or shared archive—to gather reflections and build a traceable impact. 

Peer feedback from my group was affirming and helped me think beyond the immediate plan. Romany emphasised the need for accessible materials—such as visual prompts and translated scores—for sensory or linguistic inclusion. Ellie proposed a train-the-trainer model where students could co-lead, promoting peer-to-peer learning. Christin raised insightful questions about the hierarchy of the senses, encouraging me to think about how sonic canons themselves carry cultural biases. Danny prompted me to consider whether listening might include music, environmental sound, or personal sound archives, making space for culturally plural practices of attention.

One risk I identified was the ambiguity of the sessions. Without a clear goal, would participants be confused or disengaged? Would it be misunderstood as therapy or mindfulness? To mitigate this, I will make sure to frame the practice clearly as artistic and critical, not therapeutic. Each session includes a short framing, referencing thinkers like Oliveros or Ahmed, before the listening begins. This establishes critical intent.

Another challenge is institutional sustainability. As an associate lecturer, my time is fragmented. Running something extra-curricular, unpaid, and informal requires commitment—but it also allows autonomy. Embedding the work into my PhD (practice-based) gives it longevity and makes it research-informed.

A third risk is in addressing the power I hold or represent, to allow for a space free from hierarchy. As a white tutor in a powerful institution, I represent not only institutional authority but also dominant cultural norms around voice, legitimacy, and knowledge. Even with intentions toward equity, my presence may inadvertently shape how participants behave—who feels safe, who speaks, who listens. It is important that I remain reflexive about my positionality, and that I actively work to redistribute authority. This could mean co-facilitation with students, inviting others to lead listening scores, or establishing mechanisms for shared authorship and reflection. Without these steps, the intervention risks reinforcing the very hierarchies it seeks to unsettle.

In terms of institutional alignment, my intervention sits in dialogue with Advance HE’s guidance on inclusive practice and with UAL’s online learning framework which calls for valuing diverse forms of student contributions. However, it also critiques the gap between institutional rhetoric and lived experience—especially around neurodiversity and linguistic access. My aim is to gently highlight that gap and provide one small bridge.

Action 

I propose that the Listening Group run once a month, with sessions begin within the department and venture outside – if the listening scores call for this, with the added value of reducing institutional ‘feel’ and increasing the groups visibility. I hope to eventually develop an online repository where participants can contribute reflections, listening scores, or alternative responses—supporting epistemic pluralism.

Evaluation

To evaluate the impact, I will:

• Reflect on attendance and participation patterns
• Look for signs of peer facilitation or adaptation (e.g., students contributing scores)
• Integrate qualitative reflections into my doctoral research

Evaluation will not be metric-driven, but oriented toward participation and process. For instance: Are participants finding new value in listening? Are they recognising power in silence? Are staff and students engaging in new ways?

Conclusion

As someone who has often felt ambivalent about the demand to speak, I see listening not as retreat but as radical attention. My role as an educator is not only to provide knowledge but to create the conditions for others’ knowledge—and presence—to be received.

The Listening Group allows me to live out values I claim to hold: intersectional justice, mutual learning, and sensory inclusion. It is not a fix but a practice of ongoing invitation—to listen differently, to listen more, and to reflect on who is heard.

In a moment when higher education feels increasingly performative and instrumentalised, I propose listening as both resistance and care.

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Bibliography

Advance HE (2023) Framework for Enhancing Student Success in Higher Education Available at: https://advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/framework-enhancing-student-success-higher-education Accessed (21/06/2025)

Ahmed, S. (2022) Feminist Ears [blog post]. Available at: https://feministkilljoys.com/2022/06/01/feminist-ears/ (Accessed: 23/07/2025)

Carlyle, A. & Lane, C. eds. (2013) On Listening. London: Uniformbooks.

Drever, J. L. & Hugill, A. eds. (2022) Aural Diversity. New York: Routledge.

Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder.

Gultom, Q., Utari, P. & Rahmawati, W. (2023). ‘The Importance and Difficulties of Listening Skill: A Description’. EXCELLENCE: Journal of English and English Education, 3, pp. 28–31. DOI: 10.47662/ejeee.v3i1.584.

Harris, J. (2022) Embracing the Silence: Introverted Learning and the Online Classroom. London: UCL Press.

LaBelle, B. (2018) Sonic Agency: Sound and Emergent Forms of Resistance. London: Goldsmiths Press.

Lipari, L. (2014) Listening, Thinking, Being: Toward an Ethics of Attunement. Penn State Press.

Rekis, J. (2023) ‘Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account’. Hypatia. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/hypatia/article/religious-identity-and-epistemic-injustice-an-intersectional-account/58E22487A151EC6C547B681189AF9BB4 (Accessed: 5th June 2025).

UAL (2022) Online learning framework. Available at: https://sebastianmay.myblog.arts.ac.uk/files/2023/03/ual-online-learning-framework-short.pdf Accessed (21/06/2025)Weeks, D. (2018) ‘The Value of Silence in Schools’. Independent School Magazine.

As an educator, I hope to foster a learning environment where all students feel heard and valued. Reading Dr. Haifaa Jawad’s article Islam, Women and Sport: The Case of Visible Muslim Women (2022) has prompted me to reflect critically on how my own teaching practice might inadvertently privilege certain identities while overlooking the compounded barriers faced by others. Jawad’s use of real-life examples, such as visibly Muslim women’s experiences of navigating sports participation, underscores the complex interplay of faith, gender, and societal perceptions—an intersectionality that Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory powerfully elucidates.

Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality helps me recognise that no identity marker—be it faith, gender, ethnicity, or class—exists in isolation. In Jawad’s analysis, Muslim women’s experiences in sports are not simply a matter of religious dress codes or modesty requirements. They are also shaped by broader socio-political dynamics, such as Islamophobia, gendered expectations, and racialised stereotypes. For example, Muslim women who wear the hijab are not only navigating practical challenges in sports attire but also facing scrutiny that combines assumptions about gender, faith, and cultural background. Their visibility renders them vulnerable to exclusion and discrimination.

In my own teaching context, I realise I have rarely worked with visibly Muslim women in my classrooms. Instead, I have often been struck by the number of Chinese international students who identify as Christian—a contrast to the Chinese government’s official stance on religion. This has revealed to me the complexity of how faith operates within individual lives, often resisting or negotiating with state and cultural expectations. While I may have unconsciously assumed that students from certain national or cultural backgrounds might not express strong religious affiliations, my experiences have shown otherwise. Faith, in these cases, operates as a quiet but significant presence in the classroom, one that is easy to overlook.

UAL’s own data on student demographics (2021/22) reveal that a significant proportion of students identify with specific faith traditions, including Islam and Christianity. My classroom experience reflects this diversity in unexpected ways. However, despite this, I have often failed to integrate these perspectives into the resources I use in teaching. Much of the art history and theory I draw on reflects a Eurocentric, secular narrative, privileging rupture and provocation over reverence or spirituality. This, I now see, may implicitly marginalise students for whom faith is central to their identity and creative practice.

Jawad’s call for inclusive policies resonates here. Just as she argues for sports to accommodate both faith and gendered needs, I recognise the importance of ensuring that course resources, scheduling, and expectations in the arts classroom acknowledge and respect students’ religious identities. This might involve creating space for students to discuss how faith informs their creative practice, offering flexible deadlines during religious observances, or incorporating resources from artists whose work engages with faith.

Ultimately, developing a deeper understanding of how faith intersects with other identities, as Crenshaw theorises, requires a shift in both perspective and practice. It challenges me to listen more attentively—to what is said and what remains unsaid—and to actively seek out ways to create a classroom where all aspects of students’ identities are not only acknowledged but celebrated.

References:

Crenshaw, K. (1989) Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989(1) Article 8. Available at: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8 (accessed 26 March 2025).

Jawad, H. (2022) Islam, Women and Sport: The Case of Visible Muslim Women [blog] LSE. Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2022/09/islam-women-and-sport-the-case-of-visible-muslim-women/ (accessed 26 March 2025).

UAL (2022) Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Annual report 2021/22. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/?a=389423 (accessed 26 March 2025).

Intervention: Listening Practice for Inclusive Pedagogies

This intervention offers a recurring drop-in listening workshop for students and staff, inspired by composer and feminist thinker Pauline Oliveros’ proposal to ‘listen to our listening’. Each session provides a space for participants to trial a listening score. Structured reflections follow, where participants discuss not only what they listened to but also how they listened, surfacing dynamics of privilege, voice, and presence.

Diversity considerations:
The intervention foregrounds neurodiversity, linguistic diversity, and cultural difference—dimensions that often shape who is ‘heard’ in the classroom. By focusing on listening over speaking, the practice supports participation from students who may be less comfortable with dominant discussion formats, including those for whom English is an additional language or who experience anxiety or sensory sensitivities. Listening is reframed as a productive contribution, rather than a passive state.

Link to practice:
As a community artist, my work has long been concerned with group dynamics. My doctoral research explores listening within community-based art making, and I now wish to transpose this learning into a pedagogic setting—asking how listening can reveal hidden structures, whether relational or political. By centering listening as method, this intervention directly challenges hierarchies of voice in the classroom.

Feasibility:
The intervention is feasible as it requires minimal resources (a space, simple stationary) and can be offered as an extracurricular resource. One challenge lies in shifting pedagogical norms—valuing silence, slowness, and deep attention. However, this approach aligns with wider shifts in higher education towards inclusive practice and active learning. Recruitment of participants may also be a challenge; I plan to begin by offering the workshops to students in sound and music departments, where listening is already a topic of concern, with the hope that students will value the sessions and invite others to join.

Peers’ feedback:
I have not yet had the opportunity to propose this to the course team.

While watching the UAL video The Social Model of Disability, one line stood out to me: ‘Sometimes I feel like I have to tell people my life story just to get what I need’. This brought to mind Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality (1989, 2013)—the idea that identity is complex, and that people often face overlapping forms of discrimination or structural barriers. Access needs are not always straightforward, and may be shaped by multiple, intersecting factors including disability, class, geography, and more.

This resonated with an experience I had while organising a public symposium at UAL. I asked all invited speakers to share any access requirements; one responded with an access rider. I was able to meet all the requests except one: the speaker, who lives outside London and has an invisible disability, asked for a hotel the night before the event. This was of course reasonable, travel at that hour would have been impossible for them. However, our event budget was tiny and already allocated as this was a requirement of the funding application process. I approached the funder to request additional support, but they asked to see the access rider as ‘evidence’. The rider clearly stated it should not be shared without permission, and the speaker declined. I supported this decision—access needs should not be subject to inspection by non-medical gatekeepers. Thankfully, the funder relented and agreed to cover the cost. But it could have gone the other way.

This also reminded me of an artist collague, who lost his disability benefits after refusing to ‘perform’ his disability during a PIP assessment. He was asked to balance on one leg, reach up and down, and demonstrate his limitations in front of a private contractor—not a medical professional. He refused, saying, ‘I’m not a performing monkey’, and left. His benefits were stopped. He later told me that, as someone who identifies strongly as working class, he already felt subject to intense scrutiny from state institutions. The demand to prove his need was one step too far. His story made me wonder how such demands for ‘evidence’ align with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights—the right to a private life.

Reflecting on the symposium, I regret forwarding the funder’s request to the speaker—I should have refused on principle. I also recognise that I could have asked the speaker about their access requirements before applying for funding, to ensure a more accurate and inclusive budget from the outset. More fundamentally, I see now that I could have done more to challenge a system that treats access as an afterthought. By accepting a structure that prioritises content over care, I inadvertently reinforced it. In future, I want to push back against funding models that require budgets to be fixed before access needs are known, and advocate for approaches that centre accessibility from the very beginning. In a university where 15% of students declared a disability (UAL, 2022), this feels particularly crucial.

References:

Crenshaw, K. (2013) ‘Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color’. In The Public Nature of Private Violence (pp. 93-118). Routledge.

UAL (2022) Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Annual report 2021/22. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/?a=389423 (Accessed 19/05/2025)

UAL (2020) The Social Model of Disability Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNdnjmcrzgw&t=46s (Accessed 19/05/2025)