Anti-racism Commitment

We are an academic community that embraces and values people from all backgrounds and we do not tolerate racism in any form. As individuals and as part of a wider community of archaeologists here at Oxford we acknowledge that we must re-examine the way we approach everything we do and represent. Taking a stand for values of inclusivity and fairness is a continual process. Our discipline, like many others, shares a complex history with race. We must grasp the opportunity to listen carefully to voices both within and without our discipline. 

Members of our School offer a wide range of experiences, skills and inspired ideas for challenging discrimination, which we will continue to draw on and develop.  As a discipline we study the cultural destruction, dispossession and death wrought by colonialism, but also the many other instances in which cultural encounter was a source of creativity. We have collaborated with the Oxford and Colonialism Project working group. Created in the Spring of 2016, the project mobilises efforts to reflect on the University’s historic ties with Great Britain’s colonial past and the ways in which the University’s colonial legacies reflect on the present, and our vision of the University’s future.