DECOLONISING NURSING AND HIGHER EDUCATION: From Diversity Rhetoric to Structural Transformation

British nursing and higher education have adopted the language of decolonisation while largely preserving the structures, epistemologies, and power relations that make decolonisation necessary. This book is a sustained scholarly argument for why that gap must be closed and how. Moving through four movements, Positioning, Diagnosis, Intervention, and Transformation, Benjamin Olusola Ajibade examines the colonial curriculum and what it refuses to know, the sophisticated mechanisms by which institutions absorb and neutralise decolonisation work, and the ELEVATE institutional programme he founded at Northumbria University as a live case study in building transformative work inside a resistant institution.
The book also addresses what the existing literature has largely avoided: colourism. The differential treatment of Black academics, nurses, and students compared to other racially minoritised colleagues is documented, named, and analysed throughout. The final movement makes systemic demands on the Nursing and Midwifery Council, the Office for Students, NHS England, and institutional leaders, arguing that race conscious practice is not a specialism but a core professional imperative with direct consequences for patient safety, workforce wellbeing, and public health.
Drawing on peer reviewed scholarship in Human Resource Development International, Equity in Education and Society, the British Educational Research Journal, and the British Journal of Mental Health Nursing, this is not a neutral book. It is a manifesto with evidence. For nursing academics, higher education leaders, healthcare educators, policy makers, and practitioners working on equity, decolonisation, and race conscious practice in UK and international contexts.