Welcome to the first DRL Newsletter!

Now the flurry of the start of term is over, we’re excited to share what’s been happening at the Diversity Reading List with you.

If you would like to receive future issues of our Newsletter, click here or simply reply to this email.

News

MAP & DRL Workshop

MAP and DRL are putting on a joint event in Sheffield on 10 November 2018. Join us for a one-day workshop of talks and discussions about how to diversify and decolonise the curriculum! There will also be an edit-a-thon, so come prepared with some texts that you want to add and we’ll show you how. Lunch included.

MAP UK Blog

MAP UK have a new blog, where they celebrate, promote, encourage, and support the work of philosophers who are members of under-represented and/or marginalised groups in the discipline. Check it out if you haven’t done so yet! You’ll find a post about the DRL there, too!

Black History Month Event at Leeds

The DRL hosted a session on Monday 29th October on decolonising the curriculum at the University of Leeds as a part of Black History Month. The aim of the session was to encourage similar projects in other disciplines, and to build contacts across the university.

Philosopher Queens

A fantastic new project is seeking crowdfunding. A book about women in philosophy by women in philosophy, The Philosopher Queens, edited by Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting, will include 21 chapters to discuss these badass women and how their amazing ideas have changed the world. Help make this happen and contribute now!

Volunteer Spotlight: Andrea Blomqvist

I am a PhD student at the University of Sheffield, working on the interdisciplinary area of affective forecasting. I got involved with DRL as a volunteer during the last year of my undergraduate. My work at DRL has been varied, from adding new entries to finding funding opportunities and promoting DRL at conferences. Last year I received the Petrie Watson Exhibitions grant which allowed me to add 30 new entries to DRL! Currently, I’m organising a joint DRL and MAP workshop with the Sheffield MAP chapter. I’m really happy now that I joined the DRL team even though I then was a bit clueless about what it was – it’s proved a really worthwhile project!

Getting involved

We continuously expand our list and you can help us by contributing papers via our contribution page.

If you would like to volunteer for us, get in touch! You can:

Review public contributions: scan contributions for texts you read and turn them into List entries!
Small one-off jobs: Did you just teach a course which used texts by authors from under-represented groups? Simply turn your teaching notes into DRL entries!
Continued involvement: If you have more time to commit, join our team of editors who develop the List on a regular basis!
Promotion: Help us spread the word at conferences, blogs, social media!

Getting Funded

Did you know you could get funding to support your time working on the DLR? Just recently, the University of Leeds offered a grant to Emily Paul for a project in which she added 70 entries to the DRL. The DLR is keen to support its volunteers in getting this kind of funding. Please get in touch if this is something you’d be interested in to find out what support we can offer. You can read more about this here.

A Little Bit of History

The project began at the University of Leeds in January 2015 led by Simon Fokt. It was developed in response to the stark under-representation of authors from minority groups within academic philosophy, and to the increasing evidence of implicit bias and stereotype threat within the philosophy classroom. Tired of hearing the response – “but what can we do?” – the DRL aimed to show that we can do something, and we can do it now!

What began as a collection of 100 texts in ethics, is now a diverse and ever-expanding database of texts in all areas of philosophy. Since the website launched in June 2015 the project has received a huge amount of support which has enabled it to grow to over 700 texts (and counting!), to redevelop the website so that it is more accessible, and to spread the word about the importance of including under-represented authors in philosophy reading lists far and wide! Have you tried it yet?

Thanks so much again for all your support,

The DRL Team