UCL Institute of Advanced Studies

The UCL Gender and Feminism Research Network (GFRN) and qUCL present a conversation with ex-academic writer Sophie Lewis and Victoria Mangan, PhD student in the English Department at UCL. On 7 March 2025, Sophie Lewis gave the annual qUCL/GFRN lecture on ‘The Feminism of Fools: When Real Feminists Do Fascism’, which explored the imperial, racist, and otherwise exclusionary legacies of various kind...

In this episode of Diaspora Diaries, Stephanie and her friends Sari Dom and Henna discuss the role of partying in the revolution. They explore the concept of revolution as the dismantling of oppressive systems and the importance of joy and celebration. They emphasise the need for safe spaces for marginalised groups. As well as, highlighting the political nature of partying, the importance of commu...

In this episode, Awa and Lavin discuss diasporic consciousness, focusing on the themes of belonging, identity, and home. Drawing on their experiences and reflecting on Warsan Shire's poem "Home," they explore what it means to feel at home.

Welcome to diaspora diaries, a brand new podcast by the Sarah Parker Remond Centre. Hosts Stephanie and Awa, MA students at the SPRC, explore the question “what does the diaspora have to say?” in a world which is constantly making things difficult for them. In Stephanie's and Awa's words: "We are here to deep dive and put our degree to good use. Diaspora diaries is about personhood and identity, a...

In this first episode, Awa and Stephanie delve into the concept of black excellence, the challenges of imposter syndrome, and the importance of recognising and leveraging their cultural backgrounds as strengths.

Vron Ware and Jim Scown join Lara Choksey for a conversation about the histories that connect soil to colonialism and imperialism, and why these connections matter for agricultural production now and in the future. Vron and Jim reflect on links between militarism and the English countryside, online far-right content and the decline of rural mental health services, and what nineteenth-century soil...

Clive Chijioke Nwonka is joined by George the Poet. George is a spoken word artist, poet, rapper, podcast host and author, who has gained a following of over millions through his commentary and creative work addressing systemic injustice in the UK. Here, we discuss his latest book, Track Record, a fascinating memoir in intellectual exploration of race, belonging, music and injustice. Throughout th...

Lara Choksey welcomes Ben Woodard and Camille Crichlow for a conversation on scientific racism, drawing together the work of evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould and decolonial theorist Sylvia Wynter. Focusing on two key works, Gould's The Mismeasure of Man (1981) that debunks the statistical methods and cultural beliefs of biological determinism, and Wynter's open letter to her colleagues on...

Gala Rexer and a group of Race, Ethnicity, and Postcolonial Studies master students, Aisha Rana-Deshmukh, Gabriel Rahman, Julia Snow, and Alex Eaglestone, welcome Alexandre White, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University and author of Epidemic Orientalism (Stanford University Press, 2023). Dr. White discusses health and illness through the lens of racial and sexual boundaries i...

The UCL Gender and Feminism Research Network (GFRN) and qUCL present a conversation with Rahul Rao, Reader in International Political Thought at the University of St Andrews, and inclusive heritage specialist Sean Curran. On 14 May 2024, Rao gave the GFRN and qUCL joint annual lecture titled 'The Libidinal Lives of Statues'. In this episode, Rao and Curran expand on the central question of the lec...

In this second episode on Indigenous Ecologies, IAS postdoctoral fellows Olivia Arigho-Stiles and Adriana Suarez Delucchi are in conversation with Nayanika Mathur, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies at Wolfson College, Oxford University. Mathur's research is interested in the anthropology of politics, development, environment, law, human-animal studies, and research methods. She is...

In this first episode on Indigenous Ecologies, IAS postdoctoral fellows Olivia Arigho-Stiles and Adriana Suarez Delucchi are in conversation with Indigenous K’iche’ Maya scholar and activist Emil’ Keme. Keme is professor in the English Department at Emory University, Atlanta. His teaching and research focus on contemporary Indigenous literatures and social movements, Central American-American lite...

Zoltán Kékesi, cultural historian at the Centre for Collective Violence, Holocaust and Genocide Studies at University College London, is in conversation with Neil Gregor, Professor of Modern European History at Southampton University. They talk about the centrality of music in Nazi ideology and its “affective legacies”. How do the ways change in which different generations of listeners hear certai...

Zoltán Kékesi, cultural historian at the Centre for Collective Violence, Holocaust and Genocide Studies at University College London, is in conversation with Kelly Jakubowski, Associate Professor in Music Psychology at Durham University, to talk about the psychology of musical memories. They discuss how music shapes our memories, especially when music was experienced in the context of Nazi organis...

Gala Rexer welcomes Xine Yao, Associate Professor at UCL and author of Disaffected: The Cultural Politics of Unfeeling in Nineteenth-Century America (Duke University Press, 2021). Reflecting on how Disaffected has travelled as a book, a theory, and a method over the past two years, Xine speaks about what thinking though and with the fields of Black studies, Indigenous studies, Asian diasporic stud...

Gala Rexer welcomes Akwugo Emejulu, Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick and author of Fugitive Feminism (Silver Press, 2022). Discussing the figure of the fugitive from a Black feminist perspective, Akwugo addresses questions about solidarity and coalitional work, strategies of counter-storytelling and playing with new forms of writing, and discusses the difficulties of staying in...

Luke de Noronha welcomes Musab Younis, senior lecturer in politics and international relations at Queen Mary, University of London, and author of On the Scale of the World: The Formation of Black Anticolonial Thought (University of California Press, 2022). Musab traces the themes and arguments of his important new book, which examines the reverberations of anticolonial ideas that spread across the...

Maya Mikdashi is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies and a lecturer in the program in Middle East Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. In conversation we discuss Maya's first book, Sextarianism: Sovereignty, Secularism, and the State in Lebanon. Transcript available here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/conversation-maya-mikdashi www.ucl.ac.uk...

Luke de Noronha welcomes Maurice Stierl, researcher at Osnabrück University in Germany and author of Migrant Resistance in Contemporary Europe (Routledge, 2019). Maurice describes the varied patterns of movement and militarisation at the sea borders of Europe: the Atlantic, Central Mediterranean, Aegean and Channel crossings. In both his intellectual and activist work, Maurice joins those demandin...

Gala Rexer welcomes Françoise Vergès, franco-Reunionnese activist, independent curator, and public educator, to talk about her most recent books, A Feminist Theory of Violence (2022), The Wombs of Women. Race, Capital, Feminism (2020,) and A Decolonial Feminism (2019). Transcript: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/transcripts/transcript-conversation-francoise-verges This conversation was...

Karimah Ashadu joins the SPRC podcast to discuss two of her recent films, 'Brown Goods' (2020) and 'Plateau' (2022), on the labour and labourers that sustain informal economies of waste disposal and tin mining in Germany and Nigeria. 'Plateau' (excerpt), 2021-2022 HD digital film, colour with sound - two channel https://youtu.be/d8oOp-dX6hk courtesy the artist and Fondazione in between Art Film 'B...

Coretta Phillips, Professor of Criminology and Social Policy, joins Clive Nwonka for a conversation on race, criminal justice and social policy. Coretta discusses ethnographically capturing both the organic experiences of multi-culture and the more structured and governed forms of multiculturalism taking place within the prison system, her recent work on criminal justice experiences of Gypsy and T...

Professor Gregory Thompson explains more about the emphasis of the BA Creative Arts and Humanities programme on careers and the future of work.

Medical anthropologist, James Doucet-Battle, joins us to talk about his book, Sweetness in the Blood: Race, Risk and Type 2 Diabetes. Discussing the importance of delinking race from risk in order to tell a more holistic, anthropological story of what it means to be Black, James brings autobiographical elements into his work and explores the relationship between race, gender and ancestry, the mapp...

Luke de Noronha welcomes Kojo Koram, Lecturer in Law at Birkbeck School of Law and author of 'Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire' (John Murray Press, 2022). Discussing his recent book, Kojo addresses questions around 20th century decolonisation, neoliberalism and national sovereignty, tying these threads to today’s spiralling global wealth inequality, accelerating climate crisis,...