Dr Yasmeen Narayan
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Overview
Overview
Biography
Yasmeen Narayan is a Lecturer in Postcolonial and Psychosocial Studies who convenes the Culture Diaspora Ethnicity MA programme and the Race Forum at Birkbeck.
Yasmeen’s current book project presents a transdisciplinary, reparatory theory of racialised subjectification.
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Research
Research
Research interests
- racialised subjectification
- colonial nationalisms and taxonomies
- antinationalisms and internationalisms
- creolisation and hybridity
- postcoloniality
- police violence in Britain in the 1970s and 80s
- urban cultures
- reparative justice
- sexual categorisation
Research overview
One branch of Yasmeen’s research interweaves a postcolonial theory of racialised subjectification through ethnographic portraits.
Another is a reparative theory of Caribbeanness that rereads the precolonial histories of some of the materials used in the invention of modern colonial Caribbean cultural forms. This theory illuminates subterranean, submarine histories of cultural invention underneath nineteenth-century colonial nationalist taxonomies and postcolonial common-sense modes of thought.
A third focuses on the intertwined histories of anticolonial, antifascist and antiracist political cultures and police violence in Britain in the nineteen seventies and eighties. It further examines the psychopolitical legacies of police violence.
A fourth explores sexual categorisation and sexual violence.
Yasmeen’s current book project, that will be published by Manchester University Press, stretches across the social sciences and arts and humanities. It presents a transdisciplinary, reparatory theory of racialised subjectification.Research Centres and Institutes
- convenor, Race Forum
- member, Centre for Research on Race and Law
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Supervision and teaching
Supervision and teaching
Teaching
Yasmeen designed the open access BSc Social Science programme and is Director of the interdisciplinary, postgraduate Culture Diaspora Ethnicity programme.
Yasmeen teaches the postgraduate modules ‘Race’, Empire, Postcoloniality and Culture, Community, Identity this year.
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Publications
Publications
Article
- Narayan, Yasmeen (2023) Police violence and biocolonisation. Ethnic and Racial Studies ISSN 0141-9870.
- Narayan, Yasmeen (2021) On histories of policing, academic reconstruction and reparation. Identities ISSN 1070-289X.
- Narayan, Yasmeen (2020) Humiliation and policing the borders of the university. Discover Society
- Narayan, Yasmeen (2019) On decolonising our departments and disciplines, respectability and belonging. Discover Society
- Narayan, Yasmeen (2019) Intersectionality, nationalisms, biocoloniality. Ethnic and Racial Studies 42 (8), pp. 1225-1244. ISSN 0141-9870.
- Narayan, Yasmeen (2015) On biocoloniality and 'respectability' in contemporary London.. Cultural Studies 29 (2), pp. 185-204. ISSN 0950-2386.
- Narayan, Yasmeen (2009) On post-colonial authority, Caribbeanness, reiteration and political community. Cultural Studies 23 (4), pp. 605-623. ISSN 0950-2386.
- Narayan, Yasmeen (2005) An ordinary love. Social Identities 11 (4), pp. 395-412. ISSN 1350-4630.
Book Review
Book Section
- Narayan, Yasmeen (2012) The cultural turn, racialisation and postcoloniality. In: Roseneil, Sasha and Frosh, Stephen (eds.) Social Research after the Cultural Turn. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 144-159. ISBN 9780230241589.
- Narayan, Yasmeen (2011) On postcolonial authority, Caribbeanness, reiteration and political community. In: Alexander, C. (ed.) Stuart Hall and 'Race'. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 9780415613002.
Other
- Narayan, Yasmeen (2019) Notes on ‘Migrant City’ by Les Back and Shamser Sinha with Charlynne Bryan, Vlad Baraku and Mardoche Yemba. Streetsigns: Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths, University of London.
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Business and community
Business and community
Outreach
Yasmeen is convenor of the Race Forum which is a public forum that hosts lectures, seminars and symposia on ‘race’ and racism in relation to histories and legacies of colonisation and the global geopolitics of the twenty-first century.
It also holds public reading groups on theories of 'race' and racism and postcolonial and decolonial thought.
Events at the Race Forum are focusing this year on different forms of state and corporate negligence and violence. Some will run parallel to some of the public inquiries taking place such as those on institutional child abuse, undercover policing and the fire at Grenfell Tower.