Decolonising Academic Integrity; A critical literature review of Global South international postgraduate students’ experiences at UK universities

Martin-Simpson, Laura (2025) Decolonising Academic Integrity; A critical literature review of Global South international postgraduate students’ experiences at UK universities. Masters thesis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David.

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Abstract

This dissertation examines how postgraduate Global South international (GSIP) students perceive and experience academic integrity in UK higher education. Academic integrity remains central to university governance and reputation, yet its principles and procedures are often shaped by Eurocentric moral and epistemic traditions that assume neutrality while reproducing inequity. Despite growing interest in international students’ experiences, there remains a significant gap in scholarship applying a decolonial critical analysis capable of interrogating UK universities’ institutional power structures and epistemic environments. This study addresses that gap by exploring how GSIP students perceive and navigate academic integrity practices and processes and whether these create barriers to equitable learning. Using a dual decolonial theoretical approach, that combines Postcolonial Theory (PCT) (Spivak, 1988; Quijano, 2000; Said, 2003) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) (Crenshaw, 1991; Harris, 1993; Valencia, 2010), this dissertation analyses how colonial legacies and racialised hierarchies continue to shape both research and institutional practice (Mittelmeier et al., 2023). Methodologically, it adopts a critical literature and policy review, drawing on ten qualitative UK studies (the UK Corpus) and three anonymised UK university academic integrity policies. The Decolonial Analytical Framework (DAF) was developed and piloted as a novel analytical tool, synthesising PCT’s diachronic critique of colonial hierarchies with CRT’s synchronic analysis of race, whiteness, and voice to interrogate how inequities are produced and sustained across literature, policy and methodology. This dissertation demonstrates that these inequities persist: GSIP students can perceive and experience academic integrity in UK universities as a complex site of compounded exclusions, where deficit discourses, moral suspicion, and punitive approaches continue to position them as conditional or suspect members of academic communities, regardless of whether misconduct is alleged. Academic integrity procedures are experienced as opaque, disciplinary systems that can conflate misunderstanding with dishonesty, while institutional language and surveillance framings perpetuate fear and mistrust. Policies reproduce epistemic dominance by naturalising UK academic integrity conventions as universal, excluding diverse epistemologies and linguistic practices. Across research and governance, GSIP students are often homogenised as “international students” erasing intersectional realities of race, gender and visa precarity. At the same time, acts of resistance through multilingual counter-storytelling, reflexive scholarship and participatory research, demonstrate emerging pathways toward decolonial practice. Through the DAF, these findings expose how academic integrity discourses can reproduce diachronic colonial legacies and synchronic racialised exclusion, revealing academic integrity as a deeply political question of epistemic justice (Meghji, 2022). This dissertation concludes that academic integrity cannot remain defined by procedural compliance or assumed neutrality under the guise of Enlightenment ideals. Instead, it must be re-imagined as a site of epistemic and methodological justice; how UK universities legitimise diverse ways of knowing within an increasingly interconnected and rapidly evolving educational landscape. This study contributes a practical framework for embedding decolonial analysis into higher education research, policy and governance. It argues for systemic reform: academic integrity must be decolonised; moving beyond punitive compliance to become collaborative, equitable, and a reflexive practice that fosters belonging and epistemic dignity for GSIP students.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB2300 Higher Education
Divisions:	Theses and Dissertations > Masters Dissertations
Depositing User:	Victoria Hankinson
Date Deposited:	02 Feb 2026 11:38
Last Modified:	02 Feb 2026 11:38
URI:	https://repository.uwtsd.ac.uk/id/eprint/4109

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