Nicola Rollock is a British academic, writer and activist. She is professor of social policy and race at King's College London, having previously been reader in equality and education at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and has written several books, including The Colour of Class: The educational strategies of the Black middle classes (2014). She has been included in the Powerlist of the most influential black Britons and has received the PRECIOUS award for her work in racial equality.
After completing her doctorate in 2006, Rollock was appointed a postdoctoral fellow at London Metropolitan University, where she spent three years, before returning to the UCL Institute of Education as a research associate. Her research revealed that black children still faced an attainment gap, even if they were as rich as their white counterparts.[3] She has presented her research as evidence to parliament on the attainment of black pupils. Together with the Runnymede Trust, Rollock published The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry 10 Years On, which looked at how British policing must evolve to support the diverse British population.[4] The recommendations included sharing effective practice on recording racist incidents across the criminal justice system, improving the monitoring of racially motivated crime, increasing public scrutiny, addressing the retention and progression of black staff and reviewing the effectiveness of Stop and Search.[4] The report was presented to the Home Office and Ministry of Justice in 2009.[5]
In her 2019 report Staying Power (the title of which pays homage to Peter Fryer's 1984 book of the same name that documents the history of Black people in Britain), Rollock identified that there were fewer than thirty black British women professors in the United Kingdom, as of February 2019.[6][7] This shockingly low number (there are 18,000 professors, more than 14,000 of whom are white men)[8] was covered in The Guardian, Vogue and Stylist.[9][10][11] Rollock identified that the underrepresentation of black women was due to explicit bias, bullying and racial stereotyping. Rollock is committed to making the black women professors more visible, as well as encouraging and supporting more women in to academia.[12] The Black Female Professors Forum was established by Iyiola Solanke in 2019.[13]
Rollock serves on the Wellcome Trust Diversity & Inclusion Steering Group[18] and the British Science Association Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Group.[19] She is a member of the BBC Academy.[20] Rollock provides regular comment on racial inequality to the media.[21] She has criticised universities for engaging "with race in superficial ways".[21][22]
Related to her research, Rollock curated the touring exhibition Phenomenal Women: portraits of UK Black female professors, aiming "to challenge perceptions of what a professor looks like, to highlight the intersectionality of race and gender and to showcase the achievements of this under-represented group of academics."[23] Featuring photographs by Bill Knight,[24][25]Phenomenal Women was displayed at locations including in 2020 at London's Southbank Centre[26][27] and at the University of Cambridge in 2021.[28][a]
Rollock, Nicola (4 January 2012). "The invisibility of race: intersectional reflections on the liminal space of alterity". Race Ethnicity and Education. 15: 65–84. doi:10.1080/13613324.2012.638864. S2CID143508824.
The Colour of Class: The educational strategies of the Black middle classes. Routledge. 2014. ISBN978-0415809825.
The Racial Code: Tales of Resistance and Survival. Allen Lane. 2022. ISBN978-0241521052.
