Events

December 2023 - Queermas: an Antiracist Collective Care Workshop

In recognition of the fact that the christmas period can often be incredibly isolating for many of us and especially for queer people, Race.ed and the African and Caribbean Society are curating a space for us to consider the possibilities of anti-racist collective care. Come along and join us for a moment of communal dreaming, joy and care before the christmas break. Snacks will be provided! content.

22 November 2023 – Grenfell: The Untold Story

Co-sponsored by RACE.ED and Social Policy 

RACE.ED and Social Policy are hosting a film screening series from October to November to explore the relationship between race, power and inequalities. During the Black History Month, we are screening films discussing anti-Black racism, the dialogues about strategies of resistance and cultural aspects that remain tools for empowerment.

Oscar nominated documentary ‘I am not your negro’ is the second film in this series. Based on the life and writings of the civil right activist James Baldwin, the documentary features key aspects of his ideas about race in the United States and offers a historical lens into the racial present.

The screening will be from 16h-18h at 50 George Square, G.06. There will be popcorn and refreshments, as well as a brief introduction and discussion following the screening.

Join us!

What’s Race Got to DO With It? – 3 November 2023

Critical reflections on researching and teaching social policy

Despite having no scientific validity, race prevails as a structural force in social life with significant material consequences. However, reports on teaching at UK HEIs in social policy demonstrate that ‘race’ remains peripheral, if not invisible, in the current teaching and research of social policy (Williams, 2022; Craig et al., 2019; Meer, 2020). Furthermore, despite the current context of growing anti-immigrant nationalism, far-right populism, austerity, and welfare reforms, we are increasingly confronted with the idea of a ‘post-racial’ society, where race and racism are no longer seen as central to understanding well-being and inequalities in contemporary societies.

This seminar addresses this issue and is organized to coincide with the launch and delivery of the Race, Power, and Social Policy course at the University of Edinburgh. Bringing together leading scholars in the field of race, migration, citizenship, and social policy, the panel discusses the current methodological, conceptual, and political challenges in the study of race and social policy. Taking into consideration the deep yet malleable relationship of race to citizenship, borders, and the nation-state, this panel provides a critical pathway for engaging with and going beyond social policy in the way we understand difference and inequality and their embeddedness in legal and policy structures.

The panel will be chaired by Professor Nasar Meer and will feature Professor Fiona Williams, Professor Michaela Benson, Dr. Nadya Ali, and Dr. Hakan Seckinelgin. This event is supported by the Social Policy Association, Alwaleed Centre, and RACE.ED at the University of Edinburgh.

IASH Welcome Reception – 3 October 2023

IASH’S 2023 Welcome Reception took place on Tuesday, October 3rd, from 17:30 to 19:00, in the Centre for Research Collections on the 6th Floor of the Main Library, George Square. All Fellows and Affiliates were encouraged to attend for drinks, informal discussion, and the opportunity to meet some of IASH’s partners, including GENDER.ED, RACE.ED, and the Library. The event provided a welcoming atmosphere for networking and socializing among the IASH community and its affiliated partners.

French, but not (Q) White: expanding Frenchness for the 21st Century – 11 October 2023

Centre of African Studies Seminar Series 

Speaker: Professor Mame-Fatou Niang, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg

Discussant: Dr Fraser McQueen, Lecturer in French Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Bristol

Chair: Dr Katucha Bento, Lecturer in Race and Decolonial Studies, Co-Director of RACE.ED, University of Edinburgh

Organised by the Centre of African Studies and co-badged by RACE.ED, University of EdinburghThe Centre of African Studies is pleased to invite you to the following seminar as part of its seminar series.

Speaker: Professor Mame-Fatou Niang, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg

Discussant: Dr Fraser McQueen, Lecturer in French Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Bristol

Chair: Dr Katucha Bento, Lecturer in Race and Decolonial Studies, Co-Director of RACE.ED, University of Edinburgh

Organised by the Centre of African Studies and co-badged by RACE.ED, University of Edinburgh

Race and racism do not exist in contemporary France where they supposedly lie lifeless, slain by the Republican sword that felled them in 1789. This talk will analyze France’s refusal to consider race as a valid category of analysis, when it functions precisely as an instantaneous element of natural belonging to the national group for whites (irrespective of their citizenship status), and an indelible mark of foreignness, probationary acceptance, or impossible inclusion in the case of non-whites. More specifically, this talk weights on what the refusal to “see” race has meant for France’s engagement with African countries and African citizens.Ultimately, by confronting the silences around race, racism and colonial memory, this lecture will propose keys to mend the Republic’s broken promise of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. 

Thinking Abolition through Black Queer Feminism – 16 October 2023 

Co-sponsored by EREN, GENDER.ED, RACE.ED, and the BAME Staff Network

This was an introductory political education workshop, suitable for all staff, that engages participants to collectively examine and deepen understandings of abolition.

We explored abolition through a Black, queer, feminist lens — putting the contemporary political moment within the context of its historical lineage(s). 

The workshop drew on film, music and popular texts, and provide opportunities for small and large group discussions. 

Speaker Bio:

Dominique Barron is a researcher and designer. Their current research is focussed on examining the social impacts of technology through a critical, decolonial analysis. Previous research projects have also examined themes related to place-making, space, diaspora, political resistance, citizenship, and social mobility. She recently worked on the National Lottery Funded Rita Keegan Archive Project and the Afrofeminist Transatlantic Collaboration project; and their work has appeared in Hyperallergic and 20/20, an exhibition curated by Aida Wilde and Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski.

Leaning into the Metaphysics of Liberation – 27 October 2023 

Edinburgh Futures Autumn Season Event 

This Black History Month event took on a long-discussed topic in the Black and Afrocentric movements across the world: the challenged idea and risks of leadership. The panel explored different contexts in which Black people have made expressions of change and strategic collective work towards anti- and de-colonial liberations. 

This event was programmed in collaboration with RACE.ED.

RACE.ED and Social Policy October-November Film Screening Series

RACE.ED and Social Policy are hosting a film screening series from October to November to explore the relationship between race, power and inequalities. During the Black History Month, we are screening films discussing anti-Black racism, the dialogues about strategies of resistance and cultural aspects that remain tools for empowerment.

Oscar nominated documentary ‘I am not your negro’ is the second film in this series. Based on the life and writings of the civil right activist James Baldwin, the documentary features key aspects of his ideas about race in the United States and offers a historical lens into the racial present.

The screening will be from 16h-18h at 50 George Square, G.06. There will be popcorn and refreshments, as well as a brief introduction and discussion following the screening.

Join us!

For other films and dates, please see below:

11th October: “Stuart Hall Project”

25th October: “I’m not your Negro”

Claudia Rankine and Dionne Brand: Poetry and Power – 13 August 2023

Edinburgh International Book Festival Event, in association with RACE.ED

A rare opportunity to witness two of the most lauded and celebrated North American poets of recent years in conversation. With careers spanning several decades, Dionne Brand and Claudia Rankine discuss their writing to date, and how they have used the form to explore and dissect issues of institutional racism, feminism, migration, capitalism, language, and memory to tell the story of who we are. Chaired by Jess Brough.

What Draupadi Said to Penelope – 24 -27 August 2023

Edinburgh Fringe Festival dance show supported by RACE.ED and GENDER.ED. Live music, narration and dance. 

Had Penelope ever met Draupadi, what would they say to each other? What stories of the patriarchy would they share? Which feminist dreams might they weave for each other? In this contemporary, feminist reimagining of epics, dancers and musician explore the stories of six legendary characters.

In the dead of night, as Penelope unravels the shroud she is weaving in an effort to delay an impending marriage to one of her many suitors, a nocturnal wind blows through her chambers, bringing to her the stories of five women from the Mahabharata: Gandhari, Hidimbi, Chitrangada, Kunti and Draupadi. Theirs are the tales of choice, motherhood, gender, oppression and violence. At times Penelope hears of them, at others she becomes one with them in retelling that choses to disrupt and retell the traditional narrative of men.

This is a transnational feminist creative project, embedded in literature and poetry, from Margaret Atwood to Iravati Karve, Jasmine Kaur and Mahasweta Devi. The five dancers are joined by five local vocal artists, guitar, sitar and tabla players combining classical and contemporary music. The pieces based on Indian classical dance styles and further developed by contemporary dance and movement.

Racism and the Republic: Understanding the Uprisings in France – 12 July 2023

Online panel event organized by Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power and co-hosted with RACE.ED
The Police killing of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, joins a long established pattern of racialized police violence in France. The uprisings it sparked, too, are connected with continued mobilizations against state sanctioned racial discrimination, and cannot be understood apart from these encounters. Meanwhile, in speeches, newsrooms and social media posts, the language of ‘riots’ and ‘integration’ obscure these racialized social dynamics, in ways that portray the Republic as a victim of France’s hospitality. How has this come to pass and in what ways can be better understand current and unfolding developments? Join us for this specially convened panel of speakers who can help us to do just this.

From 1898 to Now: Omdurman, Military Rule and Reparations  – 14 June 2023

Co-organised by The Sudanese Community in Edinburgh, The Anatomical Museum, RACE.ED and Centre of African Studies at The University of Edinburgh
This event was part of the ‘Edinburgh Sudanese Community Partnership’ project, established by the Sudanese Community and allies from The University of Edinburgh in 2018.
The skulls of two Sudanese Shaheed from Omdurman have been held in Edinburgh for over 120 years. Who were they? What did they look like? What can we do about this now? How do we repair from the past, for a better future for Sudan today?

Insubmissive Dialogues of Black Women – 31 May 2023

With Dayse Sacramento (Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia da Bahia, Brazil)
Chaired by Dr Almiro Andrade (University of the Arts London, UK)
This seminar presented an analysis of the experience of Diálogos Insubmissos de Mulheres Negras (DIMN, Insubmissive Dialogues of Black Women), a platform promoting artistic and literary activities in Salvador, Brazil for the past five years. DIMN was created to encourage and strengthen participation of Black women artists, intellectuals and researchers, as well as promote the circulation of their productions in literary festivals. To this end, we analysed activities and events that took place or were created between 2017 and 2022, based on the 50 activities that were held and through videos and recordings of the activities performed. After the analysis, we observed that the literary events are concrete opportunities of knowledge exchange and cultural and academic debates about literature with an intersection with other artistic languages. With the study, we also realized how the social media platforms Instagram and Facebook, as well as audio and video streaming platforms, create an important scene for the production of literary content, especially after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the research is still ongoing, initial reflections have found that DIMN has contributed to the maintenance of a productive network of economy and services in literary cultural production.

‘Let Me Tell You a Story’: Liberal Diversity Narratives in Electoral Politics Today – 23 May 2023

With Dr Laura J. Kwak (York University, Canada)
Chaired by Dr Shaira Vadasaria (University of Edinburgh, UK)
By analyzing candidates’ speeches and campaign material, which feature boot-strap immigrant stories and news media discourses, this presentation explored the political work that “diversity” does. Drawing from my research on race, the politics of representation, and the Conservative Party of Canada, this presentation attended to race as structural power. This allows us to trace the reproduction of dominant racial discourses, policies and systems, which not only foreclose possibilities for substantive diversity but also actively operate to neutralize critiques of state violence. When incorporation and assimilation are considered the markers of racial progress, enduring structural inequities are minimized. Our concern is about how power structures endure both despite and through incorporative politics.

Fireside Chat with Professor Nicola Rollock – 24 March 2023

With Professor Nicola Rollock (King’s College London) and Professor Nasar Meer (University of Edinburgh)
Co-hosted by Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, IASH, RACE.ED, Centre for Alternatives to Social and Economic Inequalities (CASEI) and The University of Lancaster Department of Sociology

inclusion is beautiful but including is ugly – 23 March 2023

Women’s History Month Event with Mridul Wadhwa (Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre)
In collaboration with Womxn of Colour Collective, University of Edinburgh BAME Staff Network, Edinburgh Race Equality Network (EREN), University of Edinburgh Staff Pride Network, RACE.ED Network and Geographies of Embodiment (GEM) Research Collective

Islamophobia and Lebanon: Visibly Muslim Women and Global Coloniality – 10 March 2023

With Ali Kassem (National University of Singapore) and discussant Dr Shaira Vadasaria (University of Edinburgh)
IASH, the Alwaleed Centre and RACE.ED co-hosted book launch

Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge: Reflections on Power and Possibility – 18 January 2023

With Professor Foluke Adebisi (University of Bristol). Centre of African Studies, CRITIQUE, Edinburgh Law School, Race and Inclusivity in Global Education Network (RIGEN) and RACE.ED book launch event
We are delighted to invite you to this book launch event at the University of Edinburgh, exploring and celebrating the new book, Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge: Reflections on Power and Possibility, by Professor Folúkẹ́ Adébísí. Professor Adébísí will give a talk on the book (Bristol University Press, 2023) and the event will explore its interdisciplinary dimensions and critical implications, including for thinking about decolonisation, law, legal education, racial justice, development and social change. 

Guantanamo’s Legacy: From a Legal Black Hole to a Battleground in the Fight against Torture – 22 November 2022
Organised by PIR Middle East Series, Global Justice Academy and Edinburgh Centre for International and Global Law in collaboration with CeSeR, Social Anthropology and RACE.ED with Lisa Hajjar (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Lisa Hajjar discussed her new book, The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight against Torture, with a particular focus on the legal battles over the treatment of people detained at Guantanamo. Those who took up the fight against the government over torture, forced disappearance, protracted incommunicado detention, and invented law-of-war offences for use in the military commissions were lawyers. Hajjar will explain why hundreds of legal professionals – JAGs and attorneys from the toniest corporate law firms, human rights lawyers and solo practitioners, law professors and their students – were galvanized to defend the rule of law that was upended by the torture policy and enlisted in what turned into a war in court. The last front is the 9/11 case; the five defendants were disappeared and tortured by the CIA for years before being transferred to Guantanamo in 2006. That case, which started in 2008 and remains ongoing, is proof that torture and justice are utterly incompatible and Guantanamo’s legacy is failure.

Contesting Muslim Legal Sovereignty in Colonial India – 18 November 2022 
Co-Hosted RACE.ED and School of Divinity Webinar with Dr Sohaira Siddiqui (Georgetown University, Qatar)

Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland – 20 November 2022
RACE.ED and Salisbury Centre Co-sponsored Book Launch Event with Dr Francesca Sobande (Cardiff University) and layla-roxanne hill
What does it mean to be Black in Scotland today? How are notions of nationhood, Scottishness, and Britishness implicated in this? Why is it important to archive and understand Black Scottish history? Reflecting on the past to make sense of the present, Francesca Sobande and layla-roxanne hill explore the history and contemporary lives of Black people in Scotland. Based on intergenerational interviews, survey responses, photography, and analysis of media and archived material, this book offers a unique snapshot of Black Scottish history and recent 21st century realities. Focusing on a wide range of experiences of education, work, activism, media, creativity, public life, and politics, Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland presents a vital account of Black lives in Scotland, while carefully considering the future that may lie ahead.

On the Centenary of the British Mandate Era in Palestine (1922-1948): Dr Salman Abu Sitta’s Address to Balfour at The University of Edinburgh – 8 November 2022
RACE.ED & Kenyon Institute/Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL) Lecture
In co-sponsorship with: Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), Center for Research Collection (CRC), History, Sociology, Politics and International Relations Middle East Research Group (PIR-MERG) and Islamic and Middle East Studies (IMES)
This year marks the centenary of the establishment of British Mandate in Palestine (1922-1948), as instituted under the League of Nations. In the five years leading up to the start of this era, Lord Arthur James Balfour, who at the time served as Britain’s foreign secretary and the University of Edinburgh’s chancellor (1891-1930), issued a sixty-seven-word letter of intent, which had seismic implications on the Arab world in general, and Palestine specifically. Balfour’s promise was one that endorsed Britain’s support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, while simultaneously denying the recognition of Palestinian peoplehood with national rights to self-determination. This decision, though categorically challenged by Palestinian society and leadership, became juridically enshrined under British Mandate. The results of this decision would later come to sow death and destruction in Palestine through means of forced expulsion and colonial dispossession, setting into motion an on-going structure of settler-colonialism and displacement today. In deepening transparency and accountability for UK’s imperial past and UoE’s institutional memory, eminent Palestinian historian and cartographer Dr Salman Abu Sitta will address Balfour on his deeds according to the record, as both witness and survivor. This lecture will reflect upon a life-time of research arising from Balfour’s legacy and what it has meant for Palestine and Palestinians, past and present.

Author-Meets-Critics: The Cruel Optimism of Racial Justice – 2 November 2022
Co-sponsored RACE.ED and CRITIQUE event with Nasar Meer (The University of Edinburgh) on his book, The Cruel Optimism of Racial Justice 
What can we learn from successes and failures in the pursuit of racial justice in the UK and elsewhere in the Global North? A dominant view of racial justice has long been linked to a ‘cruel optimism’ which normalises social and political outcomes that sustain racial injustice, despite successive governments wielding the means to address it. Researchers, activists and minoritised groups continually identify the drivers of these outcomes, but have grown accustomed to persevering despite strong resistance to change. Looking at numerous examples across anti-racist movements and key developments in nationhood/nationalism, institutional racism, migration, white supremacy and the disparities of COVID-19, Nasar Meer argues for the need to move on from perpetual crisis in racial justice to a turning point that might herald a change to deep-seated systems of racism.

Beyond Bilal: Black History in Islam: A Conversation with Imam Mustafa Briggs – 28 October 2022
New College Black History Month Lecture, Jointly sponsored by School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh Islamic Society, RACE.ED and Edinburgh Race Equality Network (EREN)
Join us for a conversation with Imam Mustafa Briggs about his new book, Beyond Bilal: Black History in Islam. This timely work uncovers the deep-seated relationship between Islam and Black History, from the Qur’anic period, Companions of the Prophet, and early generations of Muslim scholars to the rich history of Islam in Africa and the vital role of women’s scholarship in the West African Islamic Tradition.

What Do Black Rights and Reparations Look Like? – 25 October 2022
Co-sponsored by RACE.ED, Edinburgh Race Equality Network (EREN) and The Sudanese Community in Edinburgh
With Zaki El-Salahi, Chaired by Katucha Bento (University of Edinburgh)
Each year, The University of Edinburgh flies the pan-African flag atop Old College during Black History Month. So, what do Black rights and reparations look like in relation to this space?

RACE.ED and IASH Meet and Greet Event – 23 September 2022
On behalf of the RACE.ED directorate, we cordially welcome the RACE.ED Network and incoming IASH fellows affiliated with the Institute Project on Decoloniality to an in-person meet and greet light reception. The reception will be held on 23^rd of September between 5:30-7.00pm BST in the Project Room, 50 George Square. Spaces are limited so please do register early. We look forward to this opportunity to meet with you all and hope you can attend.

Asylum, Migration and Racial Politics: What’s New in UK-Africa Relations? – 21 September 2022
Centre of African Studies and RACE.ED co-sponsored seminar
Panel: David Ngendo Tshimba, Makerere Institute of Social Research, Uganda; Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker, University of Khartoum, Sudan, & UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Eritrea; and Sara Dorman, Politics and International Relations, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Chaired by: Georgia Cole, Social Work, University of Edinburgh, Scotland 

Building Transnational Solidarity in the Brazil-UK Nexus: Radical Pedagogies from the South – 18–20 July 2022
Three-day workshop with Dr Edineia Tavares Lopes (Federal University of Sergipe – UFS) and Dr Raimunda Machado (Federal University of Maranhão – UFMA)
This workshop convened space for collective and creative thinking by facilitating knowledge exchange between activists from traditional communities, members of social movements, and academic researchers. Focusing on radical pedagogies and the potential of transnational solidarity in education, participants discussed strategies concerning the creation of educational materials against the colonial grain of knowledge production, and the negotiation of guidelines about educational justice and policy change.

Black Presence: A Dialogue with Azeezat Johnson’s Legacy – 16 July 2022
One-day event co-ordinated by the GEM Collective’s “Black Presence” group, with the support of the LAHP (London Arts and Humanities Partnership) and RACE.ED, and in collaboration with Cardiff University
We invite participants for a one-day gathering to be in dialogue with Azeezat Johnson’s work and the possibilities to engage with creative writing concerning Black presence to move towards a “feminist geography that connects our multiple situated knowledges” – in Azeezat’s words – to explore potential expressions of Black presence and dreamwork. The gathering of around 20 people will hold space to honour Azeezat Johnson’s work from a different relationship to Black presence even and especially as we reckon with the brutalities that inform our world. The dialogue will draw from an unpublished piece written by Azeezat Johnson, Francesca Sobande, and Katucha Bento called “Black Presence: A Gathering of Words”, which will be shared with participants prior to the gathering. 

Connecting Knowledge: Queer, Race and Decolonial Theorisation – 8 June 2022
RACE.ED and Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) co-hosted seminar with Dr Sandeep Bakshi
This talk gestures towards linking decoloniality to queerness in an attempt to ‘de-link’ from disciplinary rigidity. Extending on my work emplaced under the rubric of ‘decolonising queerness’, I aim to read queer and decolonial theories, broadly conceived, in a singular frame to chart the contours of a burgeoning field of knowledge en chantier that enacts a refusal of the ‘either/or’ imperative, signalling ‘and’ as a connective thread in conceptualising frameworks of knowledge. In my view, a double-pronged approach implicating sexualities, genders and race in theorisation of decoloniality constitutes a necessary generative paradigm that allows for exercising vigilance apropos of un-/intentional erasures produced in decolonial knowledge and worldmaking.

Decolonizing Politics Symposium – 23 May 2022
Identities, RACE.ED and CRITIQUE online event
This online roundtable event discussed Professor Robbie Shilliam’s book, Decolonizing Politics, which offers a lens through which to decolonize the main themes and issues of political science – from human nature, rights, and citizenship, to development and global justice. Drawing on a forthcoming symposium in Identities: Global Studies in Culture in Power, speakers explored the approaches within Decolonizing Politics to introduce a range of intellectual resources from the (post)colonial world to think through the same themes and issues more expansively.

Decolonising Research – 26 April 2022
CRITIQUE, genderED and RACE.ED Roundtable on Decolonising the Academy 
In this event, participants reflected on what it means to decolonise research, from within their own disciplines. They addressed the risks associated firstly with de-coupling the decolonial imperative from material redistribution, reparations, and land sovereignty, as well as the danger of co-option by dominant institutional actors within universities in the Global North. 

Social Death and Rastafari Reason – 20 April 2022
Politics and International Relations (PIR) and RACE.ED co-hosted event with Professor Robbie Shilliam
In this talk Professor Shilliam focused on Orlando Patterson’s early works leading up to his famous book, Slavery and Social Death, and considers how they laid a path towards his celebrated concept of “social death”. Professor Shilliam demonstrated how this framework emerged out of Patterson’s interactions with the Rastafari movement in post-independent Jamaica. Professor Shilliam also argued that, through his social anthropological evaluation of the movement, Patterson denuded Rastafari of all reason. What politics might be emanative of the concept of social death if we situate the early Patterson not only in an imperial academy but also in its contested black spaces of post-emancipation independence?

Theorizing Race in the Colonial Question of Palestine – 9 March 2022
Co-organised University of Edinburgh Sociology and RACE.ED Seminar with Dr Shaira Vadasaria
What is new and old about racism and racialization as analytics of critique against settler colonialism in Palestine? Given the persistence of racial violence in Palestine and against Palestinians across the past century, why has the analytic of ‘anti-Palestinian racism’ been a historically negated framework of critique? While there has been a burgeoning body of scholarship throughout the past two decades that have engaged race and racism as analytical registers to examine asymmetrical relations of power in Israel/Palestine, these interventions have at times heavily imported repertoires anchored in the Global North, obscuring the centrality and specificity of land in the on-going anti-colonial struggle for freedom in Palestine. Further, oftentimes, these works have delimited and flattened the category of race and the question of racial difference as a self-evident critique organized around identity claims (i.e. ethnicity and religion) rather than situating the analysis in a critique of colonial power. Approaching race as a constituent of such power rather than assumed and fixed identity marker allows us to think about the broader imperial and settler colonial forces that enabled the entanglement between the Jewish Question and the Question of Palestine, both of which come to undergo radical transformation in the late nineteenth and twentieth century through the territorial realization of modern political Zionism in Palestine. This lecture returns to some key canonical texts within Palestine Studies to think further about the entanglements between critiques of colonialism and racism circulating in the early decades following Israel’s state declaration. Reading contemporary critiques of anti-Palestinian racism through a revisitation of such intellectual legacies allows us to understand how we might approach the colonial question of Palestine as one indexed first and foremost by a story about race.

Disrupting Coloniality in the Classroom? Decolonisation, Feminism and Critical Pedagogies – 8 March 2022
CRITIQUE, genderED and RACE.ED Roundtable on Decolonising the Academy
This second roundtable on decolonising the academy, organised on the occasion of International Women’s Day, invited speakers to reflect on a series of questions pertaining to teaching, learning and the curriculum: What radical possibilities do feminist and de-colonial/postcolonial perspectives have to offer when it comes to disrupting coloniality in the classroom? In what ways can (and must) our pedagogical practice contribute to decolonising knowledge, in particular, knowledge around race, gender and sexuality? What are some of the common as well as unique affective and material challenges (and pitfalls) involved when attempting to heed the call of student-led movements to ‘decolonise the curriculum’ in universities with colonial histories and institutional whiteness? And how can those who are engaged actively in decolonising the curriculum resist exhaustion?

Race vs. The Human – 9 February 2022
RACE.ED and EREN Co-hosted Seminar with Deanne Bell
In dialogue with Sylvia Wynter and Frantz Fanon, this RACE.ED and EREN seminar explored differences between the self and the body in relation to two worlds – the dehumanising world of coloniality and the rehumanising or decolonial world.

What does it mean to adopt categories of ‘decolonial’ as normative approaches in the Global North? – 28 January 2022
CRITIQUE, genderED and RACE.ED Roundtable on Decoloniality 
This first of our roundtables on decoloniality was convened collaboratively between CRITIQUE, genderED and RACE.ED. In this opening discussion our speakers will foreground two clusters of inquiry for critical consideration. The first focused on the context of knowledge production and use, specifically in uncoupling decoloniality as critique (in theory and action) from the Global South/or in ways that centre the Global North. What does it mean for decolonial inquiry to be pursued apart from discussions around the materiality of reparations, land sovereignty and the redistribution of resources in settler colonies (as critiqued by Tuck and Yang in their essay, ‘Decolonization is not a Metaphor’). The second pulls in a different direction but comes from a common impulse, which is to ask what does the institutionalization of decolonisation do for the University (what is productive about it)? What forms of racial anxiety does it come to manage? How is it different from Anti-Racist and EDI discourses, and what does the institutionalisation of calls towards decolonization do for the University at large? In raising these questions, we invite our contributors seek to think through and across the differences between racial/colonial power and its possible antidotes.

less suffering, more dreaming: black lgbtqi poetry disorbiting pain’s paradigm – 19 January 2022
RACE.ED Seminar with tatiana nascimento, with live translation from Portuguese to English 
In this RACE.ED seminar, tatiana nascimento discussed new possibilities to understand black diasporic and queer literature. The presentation plays with words and meanings from a queer poetic perspective with a profound claim for the right to dream futures where black diasporic and sexual dissidence can live over the same soil as our ancestors. Living together brings into view the importance of the “quilombo” as a territory of resistance and organisation. Quilombo, then, is where the black cultural and historical identity is protected. Challenging the constant presence of pain as a colonial expectation to what dissident bodies should stage, queering the territory (Queerlombismo or Cuírlombismo) is a land and a creative space of dialogue and literary production.

Beyond the Secular: Jacques Derrida and the Theologico-Political Complex – 15 December 2021
Seminar co-hosted by RACE.ED and the University of Edinburgh School of Divinity, examining the contemporary relationship between religion and politics by turning to the work of Jacques Derrida to interrogate the foundations of modern secular discourse. Addressing the challenge that the resurgence of public religions poses to modern epistemic models and political forms, the talk illuminates secularism’s entanglements with the legacy of colonialism, exposing the racial features of secular understandings about language, epistemology, religion and politics that travel worldwide through processes of globalization.

Islamophobia, Prevent and ‘Us’ – 11 November 2021
EREN, RACE.ED and the University of Edinburgh Islamic Society co-hosted event

Preparing STEM Teachers for Equitable Teaching – 11 November 2021
Seminar organised by the Teacher Education, Curriculum and Pedagogy Hub at Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh

Lunchtime talk: Fidan Cheikosman and Dr Shelly-Anne Grajadhar – 28 October 2021
Part of the Scotland’s Black History Month programme in October 2021. The Scottish Graduate Schools of Social Science (SGSSS) and Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) series of ‘Lunchtime talks’.

Respect & Recognition: The contributions of minoritised social workers – 27 October 2021
A panel discussion exploring the contributions of social workers from Black, Asian and other minority ethnic backgrounds in Scotland, jointly organised by the University of Edinburgh Social Work Department and the Scottish Association of Social Workers.

EREN Book Club: Black History Month (October 2021) – 26 October 2021
An EREN* Black History Month event. Edinburgh Race Equality Network (EREN) Book Club An online book club for those interested in expanding their thinking about issues of race.

Lunchtime talk: Gareth Smith and Axolile Qina – 26 October 2021
Part of the Scotland’s Black History Month programme in October 2021. The Scottish Graduate Schools of Social Science (SGSSS) and Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) series of ‘Lunchtime talks’.

“Prophet of God, Word of God, Son of God? Jesus in Christian-Muslim Dialogue” – 26 October 2021
Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations Research Seminar.

Black History Month – A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery & Resistance – 25 October 2021
A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery & Resistance tells the forgotten story of enslaved West Indian women and the many different ways they fought back. It is a tale of courage and resilience that, according to its author, has been virtually air-brushed out of history.

A Reggae Dialogue – with Deanne Bell – 19 October 2021
An EREN* Black History Month event. An encounter with Edinburgh’s built heritage to illuminate the role of Scots in slavery and colonialism from a Caribbean perspective.

Lunchtime talk: Chalisa Chintrakarn and Apurav Yash Bhatiya – 19 October 2021
Part of the Scotland’s Black History Month programme in October 2021. The Scottish Graduate Schools of Social Science (SGSSS) and Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) series of ‘Lunchtime talks’.

Empire, community and Scotland’s built environment – 15 October 2021
This online talk discussed the work of community organisations who are highlighting stories of Empire within Scotland’s built environment.

Lunchtime talk: What does Black History Month mean in Britain Today? –13 October 2021
Part of the Scotland’s Black History Month programme in October 2021. The Scottish Graduate Schools of Social Science (SGSSS) and Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) series of ‘Lunchtime talks’.

Webinar: “Can Muslim Women Marry Non-Muslims? A Scriptural Analysis” – 12 October 2021

Lunchtime talk: Khadija Koroma and Chinweuju Nzewi – 12 October 2021
Part of the Scotland’s Black History Month programme in October 2021. The Scottish Graduate Schools of Social Science (SGSSS) and Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) series of ‘Lunchtime talks’.

What did you learn in school today? Young people and negotiations of racialised intersections – 11 October 2021
Professor Ann Phoenix,  University College London

New College Black History Lecture – 8 October 2021

Lunchtime talk: Katherine Burns and Marianne Golinucci – 7 October 2021
Part of the Scotland’s Black History Month programme in October 2021. The Scottish Graduate Schools of Social Science (SGSSS) and Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) series of ‘Lunchtime talks’.

Black History Walk – with Lisa Williams – 5 and 6 October 2021
An EREN* Black History Month event. An encounter with Edinburgh’s built heritage to illuminate the role of Scots in slavery and colonialism from a Caribbean perspective.

Lunchtime talk: Chantelle Taylor and Mohammed Abdullahi – 5 October 2021
Part of the Scotland’s Black History Month programme in October 2021. The Scottish Graduate Schools of Social Science (SGSSS) and Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) series of ‘Lunchtime talks’.

Challenges and Experiences of Rural Women in the Midst of Covid-19′, Tamisha Lee, President of the Jamaica Network of Rural Women Producers – 30 September 2021
A seminar jointly organised by the Geographies of Social Justice Research Group, University of Edinburgh, and the Sustainable Rural and Agricultural Development Research Cluster, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica.

PhD Panel: “Sacred Law in the Modern World” (Rainy Hall) – 28 September 2021
Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations Research Seminar: Autumn 2021

Alicia Garza: Building Moments Into Movements – 30 August 2021
Edinburgh Book Festival Event, in association with RACE.ED
In this live event, Alicia Garza – grassroots activist, co-founder of Black Lives Matter and author of the brand-new book The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart – explores how we create meaningful and long-lasting protests. How do we go beyond hashtags and ensure ‘the moment’ becomes a movement?

Movements, Monuments, and Change – 28–30 August 2021
Movements, Monuments, and Change is a specially curated film and event program based on the film Change the Name by Cai Thomas. The program film, Change the Name, is an intimate portrayal of Black youth organising on the west side of Chicago, USA. 

EREN – Lunchtime Biography Series – 15 July 2021
Edinburgh Race Equality Network (EREN) event with Shaira Vadasaria, Lecturer in Race and Decolonial Studies at the School of Social and Political Science and Associate Director of RACE.ED, University of Edinburgh

De-Representing the Black Body in Brazilian Colonial Imagination – 16 June 2021
RACE.ED Seminar with Osmundo Pinho, Federal University of Bahia (UFBA)
In this presentation, based mostly on Dr Pinho’s work as a Richard E. Greenleaf Fellow at the Tulane University Latin American Library, he examines the central place of images for the colonial imagination in Brazil. The creation of images in this context has nothing to do with any kind of epistemological transparency, on the contrary, it shows how the paradigmatic conventions of representation engender political meanings and how social stereotypes forged a grammar for the interpretation / production of black bodies in the (post) colonial Brazilian horizon. In addition he will address some colonial forms of meaning production, based on representation, as an immanent colonial epistemological device, vis-à-vis other strategies based on African epistemologies, as in the work of contemporary Afro-Brazilian artists.

Community Language Learning in Scotland during the COVID-19 Pandemic – 15 June 2021
Centre for Education for Racial Equality in Scotland (CERES) event
This seminar presented the findings from a newly published research report investigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on teaching and learning community languages in Scotland. The report adds to a growing research base on the impact of remote teaching and learning on school-aged pupils during the pandemic but also sheds light on important learning outside of mainstream school provision, which often goes unnoticed.

The Study of Islam and Muslims in the Shadow of the “War on Terror”: Complexity, Reflexivity and Decolonising Methodologies – 8 June 2021
A major conference delivered by the Edinburgh Alwaleed Centre, Moray House School of Education and Sport, Centre for Education for Racial Equality Scotland & RACE.ED
This conference aims to explore how the Decolonising the Curriculum Movement (DCM) at British Universities could enable research and teaching staff to tackle and transcend the aforementioned dynamics present in the study of Muslims and Islam within any discipline in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In so doing, it invites academics to critically explore the politics of engaging in research and teaching on Islam/Muslims at British universities through an exercise of self-reflection on their own research and teaching practises. It also aims to reflect more broadly on the political implications/limitations of producing knowledge about Islam/Muslims in the current socio-political context that differentially in(ex)cludes Muslim voices.

Racial Equity Work in the University and Beyond: The Race Equality Charter in Context – 3 June 2021
Panel event co-hosted by RACE.ED and the Centre for Education for Racial Equality in Scotland (CERES)
Exploring perspectives on racial inequalities in higher education, this RACE.ED event will invite local and broader reflections on the Race Equality Charter, locating it within the wider context of racial inequalities in higher education today. Beginning with an overview of key findings from the recently published Race Equality Charter Review, the session will consider how the Charter, managed by Advance HE, provides a framework through which institutions work to identify and self-reflect on institutional impediments for minoritised staff and students. How and in what ways might the Charter address the challenge it sets itself, and what are the obstacles in doing so? This 90 minute symposium will bring together a series of reflections on these questions, and invite audience discussion and feedback.

Advance HE’s Race Equality Charter (REC) provides a framework through which institutions work to identify and self-reflect on institutional and cultural barriers standing in the way of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff and students.

Black Women and French Citizenship – 19 May 2021
RACE.ED and Centre of African Studies (CAS) Seminar with Annette Joseph-Gabriel, University of Michigan, and Mame Fatou Niang, Carnegie Mellon University
In Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire, Annette Joseph-Gabriel mines published writings and untapped archives to reveal Black French women’s anticolonialist endeavours. She shows how their activism and thought challenged French imperialism by shaping forms of citizenship that encouraged multiple cultural and racial identities. Expanding the possibilities of belonging beyond national and even Francophone borders, these women imagined new pan-African and pan-Caribbean identities informed by Black feminist intellectual frameworks and practices. The visions they articulated also shifted the idea of citizenship itself, replacing a single form of collective identity and political participation with an expansive plurality of forms of belonging.

Listening to and from Palestine – 17 May 2021
Co-hosted by RACE.ED, Sociology, Politics and International Relations Middle East Research Group (PIR MERG), Islamic and Middle East Studies (IMES) and Edinburgh Centre for International and Global Law (ECIGL)
This panel will discuss the recent events across Palestine and contextualise them within a wider historical, legal and political context. Panellists will discuss the implications and repercussions of this moment and the challenges they pose for those who struggle on the ground and advocate for justice in Palestine.

Brexit, Hostile Environment, and the Breakup of the United Kingdom – 17 May 2021
SSAHE (Social Scientists Against the Hostile Environment) webinar event, as part of  SSAHE’s series of webinars exploring the impacts of Brexit on the Hostile Environment in the UK
The focus of this webinar is on the specific ways Brexit has impacted the stability and the functioning of the British state both at the centre and its periphery, focusing on nationalism and the state in Scotland and Northern Ireland. In particular, we would like to examine how these major destabilisations, which might lead to possible dissolutions of the UK, are affecting both majorities and racialised minorities in these locations and the extent to which the interrelationships between Brexit, COVID 19 and the state have reconstructed and/or intensified Hostile Environments to those who ‘do not belong’.

Who Defines Childhood Innocence? Anti-Racist Practice, White Fragility and Effective Allyship in Early Childhood – 10 May 2021, Webinar event co-hosted by the Anti-Racist Early Years Collective (AREYC), the Centre for Education for Racial Equality in Scotland (CERES) and RACE.ED
This session rests upon the uncomfortable truth that racism is normal, it is pervasive. It is in society and it is in our settings, it is in the everyday! This platform will provide opportunities to engage in some critical discussions about racism and whiteness. As early years practitioners, researchers, parents/carers, policy makers and community activists, it is important to develop a shared language around racial literacy so that you, as facilitators of children’s learning and as change agents, can name it, understand it and seek to change practice with children, families and their communities. The session will provide an opportunity to engage in critical discussions, ask questions and share good practice in recognising and developing effective allyship, leading to tangible actions.

Discussion of Covid in India – 7 May 2021
Event co-hosted by Centre for South Asian Studies (CSAS) and RACE.ED
As the harrowing impact of the Covid pandemic continues to unfold across India, we will get together to think through how to make sense of what is happening, and what we should do to better support our friends and colleagues. Please join Edinburgh University community members for an opportunity to discuss these questions, share thoughts and experiences, and learn from and support one another.

Co-sponsored RACE.ED and CRITIQUE Virtual Author-Meets-Critics on Dreamworlds of Race with Duncan Bell (Cambridge) – 28 April 2021Tracing how intellectual elites promoted an ambitious project of political and racial unification between Britain and the United States, Dreamworlds of Race analyzes ideas of empire and world order that reverberate to this day.

Gender, Race and the 2021 Scottish Parliamentary Election – 26 April 2021
The Centre on Constitutional Change, genderED and RACE.ED are delighted to host this event, which will explore gender and race in the upcoming election.

‘Between history and memory: Slavery and race’ – A workshop with Professor Ana Lucia Araujo – 22 April 2021
The Edinburgh Centre for Global History invites proposals for a workshop with Professor Ana Lucia Araujo on the themes of slavery, race, history and memory. The workshop will provide a supportive space for PhD students, and those who have recently submitted their PhDs, to present and receive feedback on chapters or detailed dissertation research proposals relating to any of the above themes, singly or in combination.

RACE.ED and Centre of African Studies (CAS) Seminar: How to Write about Race When You’re White? Shifting Blind Spots, Changing Audiences – 21 April 2021
Gauthier Marchais, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex This presentation will reflect on the process of writing about race from the perspective of a white man. Gauthier Marchais will present his book, Le Deni Blanc: Penser autrement la question raciale, which was published in January 2021 at Éditions de l’Aube, in France. The book is a reflection on the mental architecture of whiteness ‘from within’ and its implications, building on the author’s personal experience. The presentation will reflect on the challenges of writing about the personal and intimate dimensions of whiteness, and notably the multifaceted and evolving blind spots which such a positionality inherently carries. It will also reflect on the moral dilemmas of the process, notably the risk of reinforcing the centrality of white voices, and the ways in which the question of the audience shapes the formulation and reception of the arguments. The presentation will open to a broader consideration of the role of ‘white voices’ in contemporary debates on race.

2021 Lecture in the History of Slavery: Professor Ana Lucia Araujo – 21 April 2021
‘Slavery in the age of memory: Britain, France and the United States’
In this lecture, Professor Ana Lucia Araujo draws from her newest book ‘Slavery in the age of memory: Engaging the past’ to discuss the ways slavery and the Atlantic slave trade have been remembered and memorialized by individuals, social groups and societies between the middle of the nineteenth century until the present.  

Subterranean Non-Fiction with Dima Srouji – 31 March 2021
ESALA Public Lecture Series 2020–21 – Frictions, co-badged with RACE.ED
The surface of the earth is embedded within it the richness of our past, but those that attempt to reveal the stories of our underground have for centuries done so as colonizers and occupiers with self-serving motives. The talk traces one of these attempts in the archaeological site of Sebastia, Palestine. This archaeological village is a highly contested site today under Israeli occupation that was abused for over a century starting with the Harvard excavations of 1908. Here, the intergenerational trauma from the history of constant excavation, forced labor, confiscated land, and agricultural terrorism, lives on.

Infrastructural Racism – 30–31 March 2021
Hosted by Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA), the Centre for Data, Culture & Society (CDCS) and RACE.ED
This workshop will contribute to this growing body of scholarship and establish conversations that push critical thinking on the relationships between infrastructural systems, materials and arrangements and systemic racism. Unfolding over two days, the workshop will feature presentations from UoE staff and cover a broad range of topics, including (but not confined to) Edinburgh’s imperial legacies; security, surveillance and migration management; efforts to rethink infrastructures from indigenous perspectives; urban space and the reproduction of social divisions; and the role education systems play in perpetuating racialised inequalities. Please join us for what promises to be a challenging, productive conversation.

The International Politics of the #MeToo Movement: Are They Now Merely Yesterday? – 30 March 2021
University of Edinburgh Politics and International Relations (PIR) Distinguished Scholars Series Keynote Address, Prof Cynthia Enloe (Clark University); PIR event in collaboration with genderEd, Centre for Security Research (CeSeR), CRITIQUE (Centre for Ethics and Critical Thought) and RACE.ED
To be a feminist-informed investigator of international politics, one has to hone skills in understanding the most intimate, as well as the most globalizing workings of power. It’s exactly that daunting challenge that tracking the diverse paths of the current #MeToo movement poses for all of us. The Covid pandemic did not banish patriarchy. Thus, the internationalized politics of sexual harassment remain at work for us to explore.

RACE.ED Seminar: ‘We have no Harlem in Sudan’: Sudan’s Deflective Diplomacy – 25 March 2021 
Dr Sebabatso Manoeli, Senior Director for Strategic Programmes, Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity, Columbia University
This paper investigates the means through which Sudanese governments outmanoeuvred rebels internationally throughout the 1960s by analyzing the intertwining of Sudan’s diplomatic strategies for protecting its reputation in Pan-Africanist and anti-imperialist circles. It argues that Sudan employed a strategy of deflective diplomacy that drew international attention away from the “Southern Problem” while addressing the pertinent areas of reputational damage.

Joint RACE.ED-Sociology Symposium: Rethinking Race and Class – 1 March 2021

RACE.ED event series – ‘Antisemitism and the proxification of antiracism’- 17 February 2021
Alana Lentin, Associate Professor of Cultural and Social Analysis at Western Sydney University

Dr Thomas LaVeist: why disparities exist…and what to do about it- 10 February 2021
In this talk hosted by the University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh BAME Medics, he will discuss his journey to discover how race disparities exist in healthcare and what to do about them.

Social Anthropology Friday Seminar/EdCMA Annual Lecture. Adia Benton: Spy, Patrol Police: Black Life and the Production of Epidemiological Knowledge – 29 January 2021
This talk draws from a chapter in my in-progress book manuscript, The Fever Archive.

RACE.ED Seminar Series – The Sights and Sounds of State Violence – 27 January 2021
Kennetta Hammond Perry, Director of the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre at De Montfort University. This talk seeks to explore what reading David Oluwale’s archive through the sensory registers of sight and sound can tell us about how the power of the state is engineered, mobilized and sustained in such a manner that systematically suborns, sanctions and silences anti-Black violence, civil injury, distress, harm, and death.

Panel Event: The Renaming of David Hume Tower – 22 January 2021
David Hume, eighteenth-century philosopher and historian, published racist views towards non-white peoples in one of his essays. Hume’s racism has led the University of Edinburgh to remove his name from the campus’s tallest building, previously called David Hume Tower.

The Social Production of our Moral Indifference: Muslims, Whiteness and the Wreckage of Racialization
– 9 December 2020
Public lecture by Nasar Meer & worskshop. Despite several decades of compelling scholarship, semantic disputes continue to dominate accounts of the racialization of Muslims, or Islamophobia.

The Edinburgh Race Lecture Series – Professor Iyiola Solanke – 9 December 2020
Join us for the final Edinburgh Race Lecture in the series on Wednesday 9th December by Professor Iyiola Solanke. To what extent do Black women enjoy legal protection from discrimination in the labour market? How can this be improved? This talk will examine these questions through an exploration of anti-discrimination law and its impact in the UK, North America and the EU.

Edinburgh Workshop on Education and the Far Right  – 3 & 4 December 2020
While the far right has come to constitute an influential and enduring actor in the European political and societal debate, we still lack systematic knowledge on its representatives’ educational views, these views’ origin and development in the last decades, how they are being brought into politics and with what effect.

Race and Heritage in Scotland – 2 December 2020
During 2020, the Black Lives Matter and anti-racism movements have thrown the consequences and legacies of the past into sharper focus. In Scotland, buildings, monuments, public spaces and street names have become a touchstone for discussions and action on racism, slavery, empire and colonialism. As a sector, we can struggle to find a way to approach such contentious topics.

CRITIQUE Lecture Citizenship, Borders and Biopolitics in the age of Surveillance Capitalism with Nisha Kapoor (Warwick)- 26 November 2020
Nisha Kapoor teaches sociology at Warwick University. Her research interests are broadly concerned with racism and the security state covering topics relating to immigration, citizenship, criminalization, Islamophobia, segregation and authoritarianism.

Representing Slavery in Contemporary Black British Women’s Plays – 26 November 2020
Lynette Goddard, Professor of Black Theatre and Performance at Royal Holloway, University of London. Chaired by Dr Tolu Onabolu, Teaching Fellow, Edinburgh College of Art.

Andrew Carnegie Lecture Series : Sonia Boyce – 23 November 2020
Sonia Boyce will discuss the controversy that arose out of a performance that took place at Manchester Art Gallery in 2018, which included the temporary removal of the painting ‘Hylas and the Nymphs’ (1896) by John William Waterhouse.

Transitioning From AntiBlackness to ProBlack – 21 November 2020
This session will hopefully ignite and activate participants to exercise agency to become individual and institutional change agents! Please join A2MEND Organization as we moderate a nationwide discussion with Dr. Tommy Curry and Dr. William A. Smith.

Anti-blackness & Technology – 18 November 2020
The Center for Black Studies Research and The Multicultural Center, at the University of California Santa Barbara presents, Anti-Blackness & Technology. Featuring: Safiya Umoja Noble (UCLA), Ruha Benjamin (Princeton), Andre’ Brock (Georgia Tech), and Charlton McIlwain (NYU).

Public Health, Private Illness: Keynote Talk – 12 November 2020
Chisomo was unable to give her keynote talk during the main conference due to being locked down on a different continent to her research documents. However, the two have thankfully been reunited and Chisomo is now able to give her talk entitled ‘”No man is an island”: Understanding Indigenous and African perspectives of personal wellbeing within Global Health Studies’.

Repression and Resistance: Inside and Outside the Academy – 12 November 2020
The Webinar will begin with a keynote presentation by Professor Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, whose talk is titled, “The Human of Human Rights.” She will focus on the shutting down of gender studies programs globally and how this connects to the issue of human rights.

MT20: Africana Philosophy as a Decolonial Method – 12 November 2020
Tommy Curry is speaking at the Oxford Public Philosophy (OPP) journal’s Michaelmas 2020 Critical Discussion Groups on Africana Philosophy, on ‘Africana philosophy as a decolonial method’

Black History Month – Lunchtime Talks – every Tuesday in October 2020
A series of ‘Lunchtime talks’ as part of Scotland’s Black History Month.

Behind the Rhodes Statue: Empire and the British Academy – 29 October 2020
Join us for the forth lecture in the Edinburgh Race Lecture series on Thursday 29th October. Charied by Dr Katucha Bento, Lecturer in Race and Decolonial Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

Africa Week:  26 – 30 October 2020
Africa Week is a cross-university celebration of the University of Edinburgh’s links with the African continent. It encourages collaboration between our different communities, seeks to address current issues and asks important questions of the past, present and future. Africa Week 2020 embraces the theme of Movement.

Arundhati Roy: Screening of Portal to a New World – 19 October 2020
Following her unmissable conversation with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon at the 2019 Edinburgh International Book Festival, we are thrilled to welcome back one of the world’s best-respected authors to discuss her new book of essays, Azadi.

Social Policy in Conversation events – 16 October 2020
Throughout the semester we will be hosting three Social Policy in Conversation events. 

Annual Lecture in the History of Women, Gender, and Sexuality – 14 October 2020
Prof Diana Paton (Edinburgh) will give the Annual Lecture in the History of Women, Gender, and Sexuality on ‘Gender History, Global History, and Atlantic Slavery’.

Let’s Talk about Universities and Reparative Justice… – 9 October 2020
Roundtable on the role/responsibility of universities to recognise their links to slavery and colonialism and engage in reparative justice.

Climate and Community: Confronting constraints to Black Environmentalism – 9 October 2020
Hutton Club is a weekly geosciences seminar series, this week given by Francisca Rockey of Black Geographers.

Patrick French – The Indestructible Gandhi – 6 October 2020
The University of Edinburgh and Centre for South Asian Studies is pleased to host Professor Patrick French, University of Edinburgh Alum and Dean of School of Arts and Science at Ahmedabad University as part of ‘Celebrate South Asia’ at the University of Edinburgh.

The Hostile Environment, Covid-19 and the Politics of Care  – 05 October 2020
In this webinar we shall analyse the consequences of the financialisation and privatisation of social care in the past 30 years and the inadequately regulated care for the elderly and the disabled, on the one hand, and poor pay and precarious conditions for many.

From Proposal to Published: Writing Histories of Atlantic Slavery – 17 September 2020
We’ll be hosting a live interview and Q&A with Dr Sowande’ Mustakeem (Associate Professor of History and African-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis) to discuss her award-winning monograph, Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage (2016).

Decolonising Development: Looking back, Looking forward – 16 September 2020
This DSA Development Study Group launch event discusses the retrospects and prospects of decolonising development studies.

After Utoya – Sifting the wreckage of white supremacy – 16 September 2020
Join us for the third event in the Edinburgh Race Lecture series.
‘After Utoya – Sifting the wreckage of white supremacy’ by Nasar Meer, Professor of Race, Identity and Citizenship at the University of Edinburgh. Chaired by Professor Rowena Arshad CBE, FEIS, Chair in Multicultural and Anti-Racist Education and Co-Director of the Centre for Education for Racial Equality in Scotland (CERES)

Wilberforce Institute Webinar – Not Made By Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition – 10 September 2020
At this webinar hosted by the University of Hull’s Wilberforce Institute, Dr. Richard Huzzey, Reader in Modern British History from Durham University, will chair a discussion about ethical capitalism in the age of abolition.

African History Reflection Day 2020: Interrogating Language Of Identity – 31 August 2020
A forum for discussing African identity terminologies in the centenary year in which the African History Reflection Day concept was sown.

Brit Bennett: How the Other Twin Lives – 28 August 2020
In conversation with Melissa Cummings-Quarry and Natalie Carter, co-founders of Black Girls Book Club, Bennett will answer audience questions following the discussion of The Vanishing Half. 

Webinar: Environmental Racism, Reparations and Planet Repairs – 20 August 2020
This roundtable will bring together activists and political campaigners to explore the need for an integrated conversation between environmentalists and reparationists.

Spent Lives: Taxi Driving and the Uber Economy – 20 August 2020
In this session, Julietta Hua and Kasturi Ray will illustrate how service labour economies are organised in ways that expect to diminish ‘reproductive lives’ for the benefit of ‘consumer lives’.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Speaks: African Languages and the African Renaissance – 15 August 2020
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is an award winning writer, literary and social activist and a multi-nominee of the Nobel Prize for Literature. He calls himself, “a language warrior.” He speaks on what he says are “very important questions” regarding African languages within the African Renaissance .

The Edinburgh Race Lectures: Decolonizing the Intersection – 12 August 2020
Tommy J. Curry, Distinguished Professor of Africana Philosophy & Black Male Studies. This public lecture will explore how intersectionality has also cultivated various negative theories about Black men and boys. In this way, the claims of intersectionality fail to distinguish itself from previously racist theories that sought to explain race, class, and gender, based on subgroup values.

Reach Society Networking Conversation – 31 July 2020
Reach Society End of the Month Networking Conversation

The Edinburgh Race Lectures: ‘Science, Race, and Academia’ – 28 July 2020
Angela Saini, in conversation about the concept of race, from its origins to the present day. We like to believe that we have moved beyond scientific racism, that most people accept race as a social construct, not a biological one.

Reading the Qur’an in Solidarity with Indigenous Rights –  25 July 2020
Join CCMS for a conversation with Shadaab Rahemtulla where he’ll share a recently published paper that may help provide a framework for Muslim-Indigenous solidarity.

Decolonising the musical university. Virtual event – 23 & 24 July 2020

‘Through the EDI Keyhole: Continuing Critical Conversations on Racism in Further and Higher Education’ – 23 July 2020
This webinar focused on the work of the steering group of the Tackling Racism on Campus project, an Advance HE project funded by SFC.

Wilberforce Institute Webinar – Tacky’s Revolt – 23 July 2020
In this webinar, the Wilberforce Institute at the University of Hull, as part of the lead up to Black History Month in October, hosted a round table of distinguished international experts on the causes and consequences of Tacky’s Revolt from 1760 in Jamaica.

RACE.ED Panel Event on Taking Stock – 15 July 2020
This event brought together a variety of stakeholders concerned with race equality in Scotland to launch the report ‘Taking Stock’ and to detail and discuss some of its key findings. The event included a panel of researchers, practitioners, activists, and politicians to discuss how the race equality agenda is developing in Scotland and where it may be headed in the years to come.

Turning words into actions: Eliminating racism and racial inequality in higher education – 14 July 2020
How can universities harness the momentum behind the Black Lives Matter movement as a moment for tangible, permanent action to address racial inequality affecting students and staff? And what are the immediate and longer-term steps universities should be taking to address structural racism? Organised by Universities UK.

RACE.ED Launch Event on Collective and Creative Pedagogy – 8 July 2020
The purpose of this RACE.ED launch event is to help us think collectively and creatively about how experiences of inequality and oppression (as structured through notions of vulnerability, intersectionality, decoloniality) should impact/be integrated into our pedagogy.

Historians on Dundas and Slavery – 7 July 2020
Moderated by Professor Diana Paton, organized by the Edinburgh Centre for Global History at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology.