Can education heal? Staff and students exploring reparative pedagogies in the context of institutional harms in higher education

In 2021, University College London (UCL) published its report following a eugenics inquiry three years before (UCL, 2021). What was interesting about this report was the inclusion of education-related recommendations, signalling a recognition that reckoning with legacies of harm meant going beyond apology towards intentionally confronting the educational implications of post-inquiry work. Reckoning with historic and contemporary harms in educational contexts is under-theorised in learning development literature. Situating our analysis within what ​Zembylas (2015)​ and others have called the ‘affective turn’, we follow ​Sriprakash’s (2023)​ theorising of the reparative functions of education exploring the ways that reparative pedagogies can be harnessed, particularly by those higher education institutions that have acknowledged histories and legacies of harm. We critically reflect on the 'doing' of learning development work across the university to explore the ways that teaching activities can incorporate reparative pedagogies. Drawing on three illustrative examples, we explain the development of activities designed to be integrated into existing curriculum content, and report on staff and student engagement with these activities. Utilising reflexive thematic analysis ​​(Braun and Clarke, 2023)​​ with data generated from semi-structured interviews with students, reflective interviews with staff, observation of teaching, and our own reflective field notes, we reflect on the extent to which our activities promoted awareness of eugenics at the university, developed student engagement with institutional histories of harm, and highlighted the ongoing tensions and dilemmas of this legacy for a ‘future focused’ (UCL, 2021) curriculum and student experience.