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London Metropolitan University

Reading lists: a guide for academic staff

Staff guides on utilising Library services, support, and resources

Decolonising your reading lists

In order to support the University’s Decolonising London Met ambitions within the Education for Social Justice Framework, Library Services has developed these resources to enable teaching staff to reflect on the content in their taught provision and to investigate how supporting materials may be made more diverse and equitable.

Our Liberating your research section provides practical tips to discover and include decolonised resources onto a reading list.

You can also watch the recording of a staff development session on choosing decolonised content for reading lists which Library Services delivered in June 2021.

Below you will find a number of resources to aid in the identification of new decolonised content.

Publishers

One of our suppliers, ProQuest, has provided this extensive Diversity, Equity and Inclusion list of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion titles from a selection of their publishers. You may consider adding from these or it may help give you some ideas.

The list of publishers we have created below is not exhaustive, but it may offer titles or examples that you could add to your reading list or it may just serve as an inspiration!

  • Africa World Press and the Red Sea Press High quality literature on the history, culture, politics of Africa and the African Diaspora.  
  • African Minds Open Access publishing mainly within the Social Sciences  
  • Archipelago Books Archipelago Books is a not-for-profit press devoted to publishing excellent translations of classic and contemporary world literature.  
  • Ayebia Press African and Caribbean publishing specialists.  
  • Duke University Press Exist to share the ideas of bold, progressive thinkers and support emerging and vital fields of scholarship.  
  • East View Books and monographs from Russia and other Eastern European countries. Also China and the Middle East.  
  • Influx Press committed to publishing innovative and challenging fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction from across the UK and beyond.  
  • Jacaranda Press Committed to publishing ground-breaking writing with a dedication to creating space on the bookshelf for diverse ideas and writers.  
  • Maclehose Press Publishing the very best, often prize-winning, literature from around the world; mainly in translation but with a few outstanding exceptions as English language originals.  
  • New York University Press Several key themes or topics, especially race, ethnicity, gender, and youth studies, unify all our publishing disciplines.  
  • Persephone Press Persephone Books reprints neglected fiction and non-fiction by mid-twentieth century (mostly) women writers.  
  • Saqi Books A leading independent publisher of trade and academic books on the Middle East and North Africa.  
  • Spark Press  
  • Verso Decolonization and anti-racism selection  
  • Virago International publisher of books by women  

We also have a collection of Duke University Press e-book titles in our holdings and you may find that this selection chosen by Library Services staff, is helpful when decolonising your reading lists.

Suggested material

We have created the following reading lists to assist with the decolonisation process:

Readings on decolonisation

Decolonised titles: some suggestions by subject

Articles, blogs, comments and lists