The Music Philosophy Study Group recognises the ‘E’ in EDI to refer to both ‘equity’ and ‘equality’ along with anticolonial approaches to ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusivity’. Despite what may be taken to be a rise in ‘marginal gains’ in relation to greater diversity in tertiary music education, the evidence continues to suggest that there are significant issues that militate against certain identities that operate outside of that/those taken to be normative. These issues are increasingly exacerbated by virtue of the extraordinary problems posed by the consequences of multiple EDI working groups in tertiary music education comprising of self-nominated members for whom EDI work is not actually intrinsic to their researcher identity.
As such, prospective members of the RMA MPSG EDI Working Group (WG) will necessarily need to be academic practitioners who:
- are understood by virtue of their academic commitments and practices to be working within and across the boundaries of music and philosophy
- have a demonstrable commitment to EDI praxes that extend beyond the boundaries of verbal claims they might make for themselves
- possess sufficient depth of personality and security of both self and work to not be afraid of speaking up about what continue to be extraordinarily divisive topics/issues
- possess sufficient emotional intelligence and capacity for collaborative thought to be assets to the WG
Members of the RMA EDI WG will be expected to work collaboratively with the EDI Lead as well as each other to co-create safe spaces for effective conversations on EDI work and have a demonstrated commitment to both anticolonial and antiracist approaches to education and scholarship. We are very interested in including perspectives from those for whom English is a second language and also those who work in locations outside the English-speaking West.
Those interested in becoming members are invited to prepare a 250-word statement detailing how you would contribute to the WG in both professional (academic) and personal dimensions and send this to
MPSG Chair, Dr Férdia Stone-Davis at: fjs23@cam.ac.uk
by Sunday 1st September, 2024
We aim to review these expressions of interest and notify all parties of acceptance or otherwise by the same time on Tuesday October 1st, 2024 with an aim to having the first meeting (online) in October 2024.
Many thanks for your interest and we look forward to hearing from you!
Alexander Douglas
MPSG EDI Lead
