End Everyday Racism
Catherine Pope, Ella McPherson, Hande Güzel and Mónica G. Moreno Figueroa
Department seminar Virtual Wellbeing Activity
Wednesday, 17 November 2021, 12pm to 1pm
Sign up nowEnd Everyday Racism is a witnessing and data justice web-based reporting tool, joining research, activism and institutional intervention. It is an independent research project developed by Dr Ella McPherson and Dr Mónica Moreno Figueroa based at the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge.
They asked members of the University to participate by anonymously sharing their experiences of everyday racism. Between Oct 2018 and Oct 2020 117 incidences of racism were reported. Clear from the outset that this research project is not a formal reporting procedure but that it generates data that grassroot organisations in the university want to give to make a collective case against racism in the University. Catherine Pope speaks to Ella McPherson, Hande Güzel and Mónica G. Moreno Figueroa to learn about the project and the difference it has made to ending everyday racism in Cambridge.
Mónica G. Moreno Figueroa is an Associate Professor in Sociology, Fellow in Social Sciences at Downing College, Cambridge. She co-leads the Decolonise Sociology Working Group and with Dr Ella McPherson she runs the ‘End Everyday Racism’ project, a web-based platform to report and monitor racism in higher education. Her research focusses on the lived experience of ‘race’ and racism; antiracism and academic activism; feminist theory and the interconnections between beauty, emotions and racism. Monica is an award-winning teacher and pioneering advocate of education as a form of social change. From 2017-2021 she was the Race Equality Co-Champion at the University of Cambridge. Since 2010 she co-leads an organisation, the Collective for the Elimination of Racism in Mexico, COPERA, dedicated to making of racism a public issue.
Dr Ella McPherson is Associate Professor in the Sociology of New Media and Digital Technology as well as the Anthony L. Lyster Fellow in Sociology at Queens’ College, Cambridge. She is also Co-Director of the Centre of Governance and Human Rights, where she leads the research theme on human rights in the digital age. Ella’s research focuses on symbolic struggles surrounding the media in times of transition, whether democratic or digital – most recently focusing on the empirical case of human rights fact-finding in the digital age. Her research has been funded by the ESRC, an EU Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 grant, and the Gates Cambridge Trust. She founded and leads The Whistle, an academic start-up that supports the use of digital evidence for social and institutional change and co-leads the End Everyday Racism project with Dr Mónica Moreno Figueroa, a witnessing platform and solidarity-building project that documents everyday racism in higher education.
Hande Güzel is a Research Affiliate at the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge. She holds a PhD from the same Department, titled "Becoming-Virgin: Re-Virginisation Practices in Turkey". Prior to coming to Cambridge, she studied Political Science and International Relations at Bogazici University (BA), and Comparative Studies in History and Society at Koc University (MA by research). Her research has been funded by the Cambridge Trust and Orient-Institut Istanbul. Hande is also a research mentor and fellow at the Cambridge Centre for International Research, and research consultant for the End Everyday Racism project.