Robert Mokaya had been working as a professor of materials chemistry for nearly a decade before he found out he was the only black chemistry professor in the UK.
He had assumed there were others in the field until research by the Royal Society of Chemistry – an organisation Professor Mokaya was elected to lead this summer – found otherwise.
“I spent a long time believing there were many of us and then when I realised that was not the case, you ask yourself, ‘Why is it I am the only one?’ You recognise it is not just chemistry but other areas as well,” said the Kenyan-born scientist, who joined the University of Sheffield as its new provost in June.
Despite being made a professor in 2008, Professor Mokaya is still waiting for his existence to be formally recognised – the number of black chemistry professors is listed as zero in Higher Education Statistics Agency figures until it goes above three because the organisation rounds all data to multiples of five to protect anonymity.
Professor Mokaya’s advances into senior university leadership – he was pro vice-chancellor for global engagement at the University of Nottingham before the Sheffield switch – have been similarly pioneering, so does it get exhausting to be constantly having to forge a new path?
“From a personal perspective I am trying to do the best I can,” Professor Mokaya said. “Of course, it has to be the case that I look around and I very much wish that the environment in which I work was more diverse and inclusive.
“I do really appreciate the benefits of having diverse and inclusive teams. I believe they are better performing. It is something I am very aware of and have become much more aware of. I really hope that going forward it will start to change.”
The reasons progress has been so slow are manifold, according to Professor Mokaya, and the solutions are similarly complex.
“Not everyone has an equal opportunity to advance to more senior levels. These barriers come in different forms and will be different for different people.
“Sometimes we can tend to generalise but there is no such thing as an average disadvantaged person. Anything we want to do to take away the barriers has to be very specific.”
Campus collection: Being Black in the academy
Together with David Mba, vice-chancellor of Birmingham City University, Professor Mokaya has recently founded the Black Leaders in Higher Education network to support the pipeline of new managers coming through.
He said there was now a “growing number of such individuals at relatively senior positions” but “nowhere near the number it should be”.
And it is not guaranteed that such progress will continue, particularly given the backlash against diversity initiatives in universities that has resulted in some states in the US banning them outright.
Professor Mokaya said he hoped equality and inclusion programmes would not “fall by the wayside”. “That in my view would be unfortunate and some might say amounts to a step backwards.”
Describing himself as “essentially a very average Kenyan in many ways”, Professor Mokaya said he had “just been lucky to find opportunities that have presented me with the ability to do certain things”.
His start in UK higher education came when he was awarded a scholarship to study a PhD at the University of Cambridge after completing his undergraduate degree at the University of Nairobi.
It was a period of “moving into the unknown”, he said, marked by the UK’s autumnal weather that he had never before experienced.
But was also a time of “being inspired by all sorts of things”. “My mind was stretched in terms of the possibilities, the things I could think of doing very much expanded as I met all sorts of people in Cambridge from across the world.”
Professor Mokaya said a young Kenyan in the same position would face a different choice today, because of an expansion in the number of universities in the country and improvements in the science facilities they offer.
But he was still committed to the free movement of students and researchers without barriers, which he said was something that should be “encouraged as much as possible”, because “everybody gains”.
As part of his role at Nottingham, Professor Mokaya had oversight of the institution’s international campuses in Malaysia and Ningbo, China.
Now both more than two decades old, the expansion of Nottingham abroad was groundbreaking at the time, but Professor Mokaya said the environment universities were operating in now was very different, and he predicted this would continue to change in the years ahead.
Hence Sheffield, which currently has no international campuses, has no plans to set one up.
“We are always looking to collaborate with the best. There are other models one can use quite apart from actually having physical campuses in other countries. Of course, as a global university, we are happy to look at what is possible in our continuing development.”
