Conference description

Following the success and national recognition of the inaugural Holding the Space: Shining a Light on Black Academics conference in 2025, we can confirm the second annual event will be held at the University of Westminster in 2026. Holding the Space 2026 will continue to spotlight, amplify, and invest in the research scholarship of Black scholars, students and professional services staff nationally and internationally.

Looking back on on the inaugural conference, over 100 delegates from universities across the UK attended, gaining significant attention, strong sector engagement, and social media momentum under hashtags #HoldingTheSpace and #shiningblackacademics.

Why is Holding the Space necessary?

Holding the Space is not merely a one-off event; conferences like this are crucial and important in the sector. In the UK, there are only 90 Black women professors among a total of 9,387 women professors as of 2025. This highlights a dismal underrepresentation of Black academics, particularly within Russell Group Universities, senior leadership, and Professorial roles (HESA, 2024). Last year’s guide highlighted this disparity and highlight that Black scholars are disproportionately found in institutions that prioritise teaching and administrative duties over essential promotion criteria such as research output, research funding, and research impact (Baltaru, 2024). This imbalance creates barriers to recognition, progression, and promotion, perpetuating inequality within academia.

In full acknowledgement of this inequity, this conference aims to provide a impact and support driven platform for Black scholars, students, practitioners and professional services colleagues to amplify their voices in sharing research in areas addressing the conference themes.

Holding the Space 2026: Black Scholarship, Global Futures positions Black academics not just as participants in higher education, but as drivers of its future, in producing world-leading research, shaping innovative pedagogy and approaches, and reimagining university strategies and policies of the future.

Call for Contributions

The Call for Papers invites submissions on themes that include, but are not limited to:

• Education, Pedagogy and Curriculum Innovation: research on EDI, inclusive curriculum, decolonial and anti-racist approaches, and transformational learning design
• Career Progression and Leadership: including research on barriers and enablers to promotion, research leadership and knowledge creation, leadership development, institutional equity and governance in HE and beyond
• Race, Equity and Social Justice: interdisciplinary research on race, policy and systemic change in HE and beyond
• Health, Wellbeing and Social Care: scholarship addressing health inequalities, community wealth and health, and culturally responsive care
• Intersectional Experience in the Academy: including research on belonging, how intersectionality shapes academic experience, intersectionality as a method and praxis, intersectional organising in the global Academy and epistemic justice and representation

In centring Black scholarship, we invite scholars, researchers and practitioners whose work engages with the themes of Holding the Space: Black Scholarship, Global Futures to submit proposals.

Submission Guidance

We welcome proposals that engage critically with the conference themes. Submissions should demonstrate originality, rigour and a clear connection to the conference sub-themes.

Submission Types

• Paper presentations – 20 minute paper presentation with Q&A (please submit a 350 word abstract, with a 150 word bio)
• Panel sessions – Curated discussions bringing together 2–3 scholars around a shared research theme or question. (Submissions should include a 350-word abstract outlining the panel’s focus and detailing the individual contributions of all participants)
• Workshops: Interactive and Practice based sessions (submit a 350 word abstract detailing: aims, approach and participant engagement, with a 150 word bio)
• Poster presentations – visual presentations of ongoing or completed research. (Please submit a 350 word abstract including aims, methods and significance, with a 150 word bio)

Submission Details

• Abstracts should be submitted via this link by 3rd of December 2025 – NO EXTENSIONS WILL BE GRANTED.
• Notifications of acceptance will be issued by end of January 2026

For more information about the conference, please contact Dr Yaz Osho – y.osho@westminster.ac.uk

Sponsorship or Partnership

For sponsorship or partnership queries, please contact holdingthespaceconference@gmail.com

Sponsored by the the Centre for Education and Teaching Innovation at the University of Westminster

Endorsed by GEMWA and Black Academic Consultancy