Redefining resilience: Language, anti-racism, and academic development in UK higher education

This paper redefines resilience within UK higher education by examining its relationship to language, anti-racism, and academic development. Challenging individualised accounts of resilience as endurance, it argues that resilience is shaped by the racialised and linguistic conditions of university life. Drawing on qualitative, phenomenological research with educational developers, the study explores how institutional and everyday language constructs racial hierarchies, sustains deficit narratives, and shapes belonging for Black students and staff. Findings show that resilience is often demanded in response to linguistic and structural harms, including microaggressions, code-switching, euphemistic policy language, contested racial categories, and institutional avoidance of racism. The paper proposes a transformative account of resilience rooted in collective responsibility, dialogic practice, critical vulnerability, and anti-racist language that names harm and supports pedagogical change. The development of an anti-racist pedagogy toolkit offers practical strategies for embedding justice, belonging, and liberation into academic practice.