Rethinking and Decolonising Assessment: Power, Practice, and Partnership
Dr Danielle Tran, Deputy Director of the Higher Education Development & Support Institute (HEDS) and Associate Professor (Teaching) at University College London (UCL).
Sally Everett, Professor of Business Education and Director of I-LEAD (Centre for Innovation, Leadership Education and Development), King’s College, London.
Whose knowledge is valued? Whose voices and experiences are recognised? Who determines what constitutes appropriate evidence or academic excellence? This interactive session invites participants to critically examine their assessment practices through an anti-racist and decolonial lens.
What we ask students to demonstrate, the forms of knowledge we recognise, the ways in which students are expected to communicate, and the criteria through which their work is judged can reflect particular assumptions about what counts as legitimate knowledge and academic success. Thinking about how assessment is understood and experienced across a diverse student cohort involves examining the power relations embedded within assessment itself. Through discussion, reflection and practical activities, we will explore opportunities to rethink assessment tasks, criteria, feedback, student–staff relationships and the distribution of agency within assessment.
This session attempts to subvert associations of a ‘masterclass’ session by encouraging participants to identify where power sits within their own assessment practices and consider meaningful changes that can create greater space for multiple knowledges, perspectives and forms of expression, while maintaining intellectual challenge and academic standards. Participants will leave with practical ideas for redesigning assessment in ways that move beyond simply supporting students to succeed within existing structures towards questioning and reshaping the structures themselves.
Biographies
Dr Danielle Tran is Deputy Director of the Higher Education Development & Support Institute (HEDS) and Associate Professor (Teaching) at University College London (UCL). She is a Principal Fellow of Advance HE and a National Teaching Fellow. Danielle’s work in higher education aims to help transform teaching practice by supporting colleagues to rethink curriculum design and pedagogy to enhance student belonging, engagement and outcomes.
Danielle is passionate about decolonising teaching and learning, evident through the publication Decolonizing University Teaching and Learning (Bloomsbury, 2021). The book is grounded in the development of the TRAAC model, which stands for Teaching, Relationships, Activity and Assessment, and Content. The aim of the model is to provide a reflective entry point to help encourage challenging conversations around decolonising teaching and learning. TRAAC has been widely adopted by colleagues involved in teaching and/or learning support across numerous HEIs.
Recent works include Knowledges that Destroy: Education, Decoloniality and Social Justice by Professor Reza Gholami and Danielle Tran (Bloomsbury, Dec 2026). Writing against the backdrop of “Brexit”, the Covid-19 pandemic, far-right resurgence, and intensifying geopolitical crises, Gholami and Tran show how contemporary politics weaponizes concepts such as social justice, diversity, and decolonization-either to vilify them or to empty them of meaning. In response, the book reframes social justice as a ‘good ideology’: an educational necessity that transcends left–right political binaries and offers a foundation for democratic, pluralist educational futures.
Sally Everett is Professor of Business Education and was Deputy Dean and Vice Dean (Education) at King’s Business School (KBS), King’s College London (2019 – 2025). Sally is the Director of I-LEAD, the Centre for Innovation, Leadership Education and Development at KBS which she founded in 2023 to ‘reimagine’ business and economics education.
Sally is a National Teaching Fellow (2017), Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2013), Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence award holder (2016) and was the Equality Officer for the Association of National Teaching Fellows. Sally was awarded the Fellowship of the Chartered Association of Business School’s (CABS) in 2025 and is a member of their Race Equality Working Group, and previously on their Equality and Diversity Committee. Sally facilitates the CABS’ Leaders in Learning and Teaching Programme.
Sally has held numerous leadership roles at several universities including interim dean, deputy dean, and Head of Department (Marketing, Tourism and Events). Sally’s research focuses on inclusive education, decolonising the curricula and student co-creation and partnership. She has recently co-edited “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Business Management” (2025), and published ‘Decolonising Tourism Education’ (2026) and ‘How to Become an Education-Focused Professor’ (2026) with an accompanying podcast. She is Editor in Chief for Gastronomy and Tourism, and an Associate Editor for Event Management. And…Sally has also recently joined the AHE Committee!
