PhD defence J.T. (Teana) Boston-Mammah

Below is a brief summary of the dissertation:

This dissertation examines how antiblackness operates within higher art and design education in the Netherlands. Drawing on various methods such as interviews with thirty black and brown students and twenty staff of mixed backgrounds at one institution alongside analysis of what equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) policy documents do, I explore how four hundred years of imperial and colonial rule and aesthetic universalism sustain a specifically Dutch mode of institutional whiteness. Using a Black feminist and decolonial framework, the research reveals that antiblackness is not an exception within art and design education but part of its structure: shaping how knowledge, values, and belonging are defined and distributed. Thus, I argue for refusal and insurgent care that eschew inclusion shifting towards a focus on relationality, liminality, transformation and reorientation.