Dr Amita Nijhawan

Biography

Amita is a Senior Educational Developer at the University of the Arts London. Her book Who's Afraid of Academic Writing; Creative Adventures in Writing the 'I' (Bloomsbury 2027-28) teaches researchers how to use creative writing techniques, autotheory, performative writing, experimental approaches and autoethnography in their academic work.

With over 20 years of experience as an academic, novelist and mentor, Amita consults and mentors projects on: decolonising, writing, student partnerships.

When writers develop a writing voice, this expands who gets to write, how they write and what they get to write about. It unsettles hegemonic forms and processes of writing.

Amita mentors staff and students in embedding social justice into education. Decoloniality and social justice need an understanding of colonial histories but also the colonial present. Decolonial lenses help educators and artists consider how we are all implicated in extractive processes. How can we develop ways of working together and creating deeper connections with each other that do not rely on extraction, that are not transactional, callous or embedded with hierarchy and power? Amita's approach is collaborative and conversational.

Amita's student-friendly resource Debunking Decolonisation and her Framework for Student Partnerships and Co-Creation are available to use by teams and courses. (See links below.)

Amita has lectured, led courses and supervised dissertations in creative writing and dance studies in the UK and USA. Her research has appeared in New Theatre Quarterly, Media/Culture and South Asian Popular Culture Journal, and creative writing in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Aesthetica, Wasafiri, Brand, J-Journal: New Writings on Justice, Berkeley Fiction Review and the Hawaii Pacific Review. Her novels are published by HarperCollins. Her writing explores how unexpected or othered bodies disrupt hierarchies.

Amita has held writer-in-residence roles as a fiction writer at University College London through a Leverhulme Grant. At Plymouth University, through a partnership with Literature Works. At the British Council, as a Writing Beyond Borders Mentor. And at Spread the Word, an agency that develops literature (and diversity in literature) across London.

The Framework for Student Partnerships and Co-Creation can be found here: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/453201/Framework-for-Student-Partnerships-and-Co-creation-at-UAL.pdf

Debunking resource: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0030/463395/Debunking-Decolonisation-Staff-Student-Resource-2024.pdf

Read a blog post on an international Decolonising Academic Writing project: https://decolonialdialogue.wordpress.com/2024/02/05/decolonising-academic-writing-enacting-a-self-in-and-through-writing-part-1/

Read a blog post in response to the Decolonising series at York St John here: https://blog.yorksj.ac.uk/tatlblog/2023/12/11/how-do-race-and-imperialism-form-the-fabric-of-our-education-systems-reflections-on-discussing-decolonisation-with-dr-adam-elliott-cooper-and-dr-amit-singh-27-11-23/