Decolonising Nursing and Higher Education: From Diversity Rhetoric to Structural Transformation

By Dr Benjamin Olusola Ajibade

British nursing and higher education have adopted the language of decolonisation. But the structures, epistemologies, and power relations that make decolonisation necessary remain largely intact. This book is a sustained scholarly argument for why that gap must be closed and how. Drawing on peer-reviewed research, four decades of clinical and academic experience, and the ELEVATE institutional programme founded at Northumbria University, Decolonising Nursing and Higher Education: From Diversity Rhetoric to Structural Transformation moves through four movements: Positioning, Diagnosis, Intervention, and Transformation. The book examines how the nursing curriculum reproduces colonial epistemology not through its content but through its underlying assumptions about whose knowledge counts. It analyses the sophisticated mechanisms by which universities absorb the demand for decolonisation while protecting existing structures. It provides an honest account of what building transformative work inside a resistant institution actually involves. And it makes the case for race-conscious practice as a professional imperative, not a specialism with direct consequences for patient safety, workforce wellbeing, and public health. This is not a book for those who believe that diversifying a reading list is the same as decolonising a curriculum. It is for nursing academics, higher education leaders, healthcare educators, and policy makers who understand that structural transformation requires something more demanding and who are ready to do it. Key themes include: The colonial curriculum and the hidden curriculum of nursing educationEpistemic injustice, colourism, and the racialisation of academic labourInstitutional non-performativity and the diversity industrial complexThe ELEVATE programme as an institutional case studyRace conscious practice as clinical and professional imperativeSystemic transformation beyond individual programmes and institutionsBenjamin Olusola Ajibade is Assistant Professor in Mental Health Nursing at Northumbria University and Honorary Professor at SEETA University, Uganda. He holds a Doctorate in Nursing and a Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, and publishes under Ajibade Academic Publishing.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1066761361
• ISBN13: 9781066761364
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Ajibade Academic Publishing
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"