A taxpayer-funded course exploring “Transphobic Invocations of Archaeology” at the University of York has been branded a “scam” by a Conservative MP.
A student at the Russell Group University is receiving payment from the Arts Humanities Research Council of £18,622 to fund their studies.
They presented a paper earlier this year titled Bones Don’t Care About Your Feelings: Challenging Transphobic Invocations of Archaeology in (Social) Media.
In the presentation, the student asks: “What if I told you that when an archaeologist finds human remains, it is a fact that there are only two choices for gender identification.”
A student at the University of York is studying a course exploring 'Transphobic Invocations of Archaeology'
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The course has prompted a Tory MP to call for a review into the use of taxpayer money to fund higher education.
Nick Fletcher, MP for Don Valley, said: “We need to call a scam a scam when we see it. This is taxpayers’ money, at a time when households are struggling – and the tax burden is at an all-time high.
“We should consider establishing a ‘Taxpayers’ Review Process’ to enable ordinary people to review and challenge UKRI and AHRC spending – similar to the process available for residents to review and challenge local authority accounts.”
Featured in the paper is branding for the University of York, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) – a non-departmental government body that issues money for research, and AHRC’s White Rose University Consortium - a doctoral training partnership between the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York.
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Dr Emma Hilton, co-founder of Sex Matters, told The Telegraph: “Human remains cannot tell us anything about the unembodied ‘gender identity’ of a person. A female Viking warrior buried with male-typical war possessions tells us only that some women successfully broke through early glass ceilings.”
A UKRI spokesman said: “UKRI invests in a diverse research and innovation portfolio. Decisions to fund the research projects we support are made via a rigorous peer review process by relevant independent experts from across academia and business.
“The research councils also award block grants to Higher Education institutions to support PhD studentships. The institutions make decisions and allocate the funding to specific studentship proposals, following an application process.”
Earlier this month, the University of Cambridge announced they were looking for a PhD student to investigate its collection of animals and plants to root out imperial connections, in an attempt to “decolonise the dodo”.
A student at York University is receiving payment from the Arts Humanities Research Council of £18,622 to fund their studies.
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The project is part of the university's efforts to address its own “legacies of enslavement and empire” and it is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which distributes taxpayer funding for research.
The advertisement states that the university’s collections have “some of the world’s most celebrated animals and plants, from tigers to dodos and rhododendrons and tea...such specimens in our collections represent how colonial histories and environmental histories became tied to the same processes”.
“The outcomes of this project will be significant. They have the potential to help shape how the natural history museum sector grapples with understanding its colonial legacy,” it said.
The successful applicant will work with PhD supervisors to uncover these histories, with a particular focus on South Asia and islands including Mauritius, Réunion and Rodrigues.
Reform UK MP Lee Anderson said: “Maybe these universities should concentrate on solving present-day problems rather than wasting resources to decolonise the dodo.”
GB News has reached out to the University of York for comment.