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.

Conference themes 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

For more information about the conference, please contact Dr Yaz Osho – y.osho@westminster.ac.uk and Paula Cadenhead p.cadenhead2@westminster.ac.uk

Sponsorship or Partnership

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

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

Sponsored by GEMWA and Black History Year