BBC Look East invited Uvanney Maylor, who is Professor in Education at the School of Education and English Language, to join the panel of a live-streamed Facebook event on 11^th June to discuss the impact of the local protests and the race issues which have been raised following the killing of George Floyd in the United States.

Speaking with BBC host and journalist, Amy Nomvula, and fellow guests Clive Lewis MP and student activist, Boni Adeliyi, Professor Maylor highlighted the need for the positive awareness of black people’s contribution to society in school education:

I think there’s a huge gap within the school curriculum in terms of black history. Yes, it has a dedicated month in October but students should have an insight into black history and the extent to which black people have been in this country (since Roman times and the Tudors, for example) and to change the narrative that there is around black people, so that [teaching] is not just limited to slavery and Black History Month

Having joined Bedfordshire in 2010, Professor Maylor is committed to educational equity, inclusion and social justice, and is particularly interested in research about how issues of race, ethnicity, racism and culture impact the educational practice, experience and identities of BAME students and staff. She is an active member of the Institute for Research in Education, where she leads the 'Participation, Citizenship, Rights and Equity Issues' research group, and is the former Director of Multiverse – a professional resource network funded by the government’s Training and Development Agency for Schools – which developed resources to aid teachers, student teachers and teacher educators with their understanding of race and other identity issues, and their ability to challenge racism in teaching and learning.

Professor Maylor is also one in just a handful of black female academics in the UK to be awarded a professorship, which she was presented with at the University in 2012.

Professor Uvanney Maylor has authored and edited a number of texts on the subject of diversity and ethnicity in teaching, including Young British African & Caribbean Men Achieving Educational Success: Disrupting Deficit Discourses about Black Male Achievement (forthcoming with Wright, C. & Pickup, T.), Teacher Training and the Education of Black Children: Bringing Colour into Difference (2016) and Educational Inequalities: Difference and Diversity in Schools and Higher Education (2014 with Kalwant, B.).

Watch a recording of the BBC East debate in full here: www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-norfolk-52995863/black-lives-matter-what-can-be-done-to-tackle-racism-in-the-east-of-england