Race Forum
The Birkbeck Race Forum is a public site for discussions about ‘race’ and racism, class, multiculture and postcoloniality. It hosts seminars and symposia which explore connections between histories of empire and contemporary social formations and inequalities and considers how local debates on 'race' and racism are shaped by the global geopolitics of the twenty-first century. It aims to bring students and academics from different disciplines and institutions together with others outside the academy.
The Race Forum focuses on subjects such as postcoloniality and empire; the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq and ‘the war on terror’; recent civil unrest and civil disobedience in the U.K and across the globe; human rights and resurgent nationalisms. It incorporates debates on political cultures such as religious revivalisms and anti-globalisation, peace, anarchist, postcolonial feminist and prison abolition movements. It is a place for conversations on the ethics of work on 'race' and postcoloniality; music and cultural politics; 'whiteness'; intersectionality; 'homonationalism'; class, 'race' and criminalisation; militarism; policing; 'race', gender, sexuality and desire; 'urban regeneration'; addiction, illiteracy and imprisonment; 'race', class and education; racial and sexual violence and institutional racism.
The inaugural meeting of the Race Forum PhD student study group took place in December 2012.
Past events when the Race Forum was based in the Faculty of Lifelong Learning at Birkbeck included:
Featured speakers included Les Back (Goldsmiths), Avtar Brah (Birkbeck), Stephen Frosh (Birkbeck), Michael Keith (Oxford), Stuart Hall (O.U), Gail Lewis (O.U), Ann Phoenix (IoE), Nirmal Puwar (Goldsmiths), John Solomos (City), Brett St. Louis (Goldsmiths) and Nira Yuval-Davis (UEL).
In 2010 visiting speakers included Michael Keith, (COMPAS, Oxford) and Jessica Sims (The Runnymede Trust).
In February 2011: 'Is this England?' Culture, memory and identity in London as a 'post-racial' city': Claire Alexander (LSE), Koushik Banerjea (Birkbeck) and Ash Sharma (darkmatter, UEL).
Future events
Heidi Mirza (IoE) will be giving a talk: 'A Second Skin’: Embodied intersectionality, transnationalism and narratives of identity and belonging among Muslim women in Britain' on Thursday 30 May 2013 at 6.0. The event is free and open to all but please email Yasmeen at y.narayan@bbk.ac.uk to register.
The Race Forum is open to all. For further information or if you wish to join the mailing list, please email us at the address above.
_________________________________________________________
For related programmes, please see:
