Sara is an Assistant Professor (Education) and Programme Lead for the Atlantic Fellows in Social and Economic Equity programme. Her research and teaching focuses on reflexive pedagogies in higher education, the study of racial capitalism, and de/coloniality of knowledge. Sara is responsible for the delivery of academic programming and pedagogy during the active fellowship year.
Sara’s current research project follows the life of an Angolan anarchist, Inocêncio da Câmara Pires, who participated in anarchist, anti-fascist, and anti-colonial movements in the 1920s-1960s across Angola, Brazil, France, and Portugal. The project aims to 1) recast the history of leftist internationalism as multi-centred by focusing on the contributions of an African activist who moved globally to participate seemingly disparate movements, and 2) to centre the acts of anarchist, anti-fascist, and anti-colonial activist, to understand what resistance and activism looked like on the ground. With the second aim, this project offers a space of reflection on how this past might inspire current activism in light of rising far-right movements and the closing of civil spaces globally.
Sara’s work as an educator has been recognised with an LSE Student Union Teaching Award in Social Justice (2023) and with LSE’s Excellence in Education Award in (2021 & 2020). In her teaching, Sara is dedicated to reframing higher education through a decolonising lens to better understand the assumptions made about university study, identity and equity.
Previously, while working at LSE’s Teaching and Learning Centre in 2018-19, Sara wrote LSE’s Inclusive Education Action Plan. This initiative aims to reduce and eliminate black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) attainment gaps through LSE-wide structural change. She previously worked at LSE LIFE as a learning developer, where she supported master’s students throughout the dissertation process.
Sara completed a doctorate in the sociology of education at the University of Sussex’s Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research in 2016, and she has previously worked in transnational higher education in Kazakhstan, Poland, Qatar, and Turkey.