UCL Institute of Advanced Studies

Co-author of Social Media and Hate, Shakuntala Banaji joins Clive Nwonka to delve into the theoretical and practical intersections of misinformation and online hate speech in contemporary societies. Shakuntala discusses online and offline activism, the intellectual source that inspired her work, and the broader question of media and communication study and its relevance for the analysis of race an...

Clive Nwonka is joined by Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of Read Until You Understand, a deeply personal and wide-ranging mediation on Black culture, political freedom and humanity. Farah discusses writing with an ethic of care, honouring grace, mercy and beauty, and the relationship between rage and resistance. Farah also reflects on what she sees as the three sites of engagement for African-Ameri...

Diego Sánchez-Ancochea, Professor of Political Economy of Development at University of Oxford From the United States to the United Kingdom and from China to India, growing inequality has led to social discontent and the emergence of populist parties, also contributing to economic crises. We urgently need a better understanding of the roots and costs of these income gaps. 'The Costs of Inequality'...

This online seminar (14/12/2021) was a book launch for Ada Ferrer's new book. Spanning more than five centuries, 'Cuba: An American History' is an ambitious and moving chronicle of the country's history and its relationship with the United States. Drawing on more than thirty years of research—as well as her own extensive travel to the island over the same period—Ferrer examines and reveals the evo...

Policymakers prefer to avoid conflicts they expect to lose, but many policies attract pushback from opposing forces in court. Using regulations that indirectly achieve controversial aims, policymakers can hide controversial policy intentions and effects in order to reduce the risk of successful legal challenge in areas of hot-button constitutional contestation. Deploying two original databases of...

We were honoured to host distinguished scholars Dr Mónica Moreno Figueroa (Cambridge) and Professor Peter Wade (Manchester) to deliver this event, part of our series Race and Racism in the Americas. It took place online on November 25 2021 and it was chaired by Dr Kesewa John (UCL Americas). Naming racism has been usually seen as a necessary sign of understanding racism and a guidance for anti-rac...

Luke de Noronha welcomes Lisa Lowe, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Race and Migration, to talk about her book, The Intimacies of Four Continents, where she examines links between transatlantic slavery, Asian indenture, imperial trades and colonialism. Concerning liberalism, Lisa discusses how ideas of reason, civilisation and freedom are continually dividing the human according to a...

The Institute of the Americas Caribbean Seminar Series was delighted to bring you this expert panel discussion in collaboration with the AHRC-funded collaborative research project, The Visible Crown: Elizabeth II in the Caribbean, 1952 to the present. This event was held online on November 10,2021. Panel: Professor Cynthia Barrow-Giles is Professor of Political Science and former Deputy Dean of Ou...

UCL Institute of the Americas was delighted to host our distinguished guest speaker, Professor Nadia Brown (Georgetown University), who spoke about her new book Sister Style: The Politics of Appearance for Black Women Political Elites (Oxford University Press, 2021), which she co-authored with Danielle Casarez Lemi. The talk centered on Black women’s bodies, specifically their hair texture and ski...

Laleh Khalili, Professor of International Politics and author of 'Sinews of War & Trade', joins us for a conversation on land reclamation, dredging and the role of maritime infrastructures as conduits of the movement of technologies, capital, people and cargo. Addressing the significant bodies of water around which a politics has taken shape, Laleh discusses the tension of the sea as a romanticise...

Professor Paul Gillingham (DPhil, Oxon, 2006). Paul specialises in politics, culture and violence in modern Mexico, and has published numerous articles and book chapters on these subjects. His first book, 'Cuauhtémoc’s Bones: Forging National Identity in Modern Mexico' (University of New Mexico Press, 2011), was awarded the Conference on Latin American History’s Mexican history prize. He is co-edi...

In this seminar, Luke de Noronha discussed the findings from his book 'Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of Deportation to Jamaica' (2020) In the last two decades, the UK has deported thousands of people to Jamaica. Many of these 'deportees' left the Caribbean as infants and grew up in the UK. Deporting Black Britons traces the life stories of four such men who have been exiled from their parents...

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, writer, independent scholar and poet, joins us to reflect on engaging with the works of Black feminist scholars, ancestral listening and her connectedness to seals. Author of 'Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals', Alexis discusses how colonialism, enslavement and the plantation economy resulted in the extinction of the Caribbean monk seal. Alexis also talks...

Inaugural event of the new UCL Institute of the Americas series 'Race and Racism in the Americas'. In the past few years, anti-racist movements and scholars called our attention to how race has played a vital role in shaping modern unequal societies. Diverse organizations and scholars advocated for afro and indigenous communities' visibility and rights, opening a public discussion about the legaci...

Luke de Noronha welcomes Nandita Sharma, activist scholar and Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, to discuss borders, migration and citizenship in relation to the pandemic and climate catastrophes. Nandita addresses the demand for a planetary commons, and the need to live in a worldly space in which the fundamental political foundation is freedom from exclusion, freedom f...

We’re joined by Dipesh Chakrabarty, Professor of History and author of 'The Climate of History in a Planetary Age', for a conversation on his intellectual trajectory and the idea of the planetary. Speaking on the climate crisis and the human condition, Dipesh states that “unless we realise our geological agency and the geomorphological role we play that is changing the landscape of the planet, we...

Luke de Noronha is joined by Gracie Mae Bradley, policy expert, writer and campaigner, and Interim Director of Liberty. Involved in the wider grassroots movement for social justice in the UK and having written extensively on state racism and civil liberties, Gracie joins us to speak about the state response and policing throughout the pandemic, race disproportionality, and the trend towards pre-cr...

Shabaka Hutchings, jazz musician and band leader, joins us to talk about his new album with Sons of Kemet, 'Black to the Future', delving into transcending from the individual to the collective state, and the healing and spiritual force of music. Discussing his musical influences and progression, Shabaka reflects on how “…being in a metropole makes you think that you understand what culturally is...

UCL Americas PhD student Shodona Kettle was recently invited to talk on the BBC World Service Newshour about the new government imposed in Haiti this week and civil society reaction to these changes. The Haitian Civil Society Commission had been meeting for months to come to a consensus on how best to find Haitian solutions to Haitian problems, but the new political shift silenced their voices. Sh...

What triggered the recent anti-government protests in Cuba? Podcast first broadcast on July 14, 2021

A BBC Sounds The Real Story podcast with Dr Emily Morris (UCL Institute of the Americas) as a member of a distinguished panel to discuss recent mass protests in Cuba. Hosted by the BBC's Ritula Shah. This episode was first boradcast on July 16 2021 [Dr Morris's first intervention from minute 11:40]

Adam Elliott-Cooper joins Luke de Noronha to talk about resistance to racist state violence in Britain, and how this resistance is shaped by histories of imperialism and anti-imperialism. Discussing his book, 'Black Resistance to British Policing' (MUP, 2021), Adam situates current mobilisations in a longer history of anti-racist resistance in the UK, and explores the politics of abolitionism and...

We were delighted to have host moderators David Lehmann and Carla Moscoso (both Cambridge) lead on this important conversation with Chilean scholars Cristina Dorador and Fernando Atria at our recent event on JUN 30 2021, part of the UCL Americas Latin American Studies series. Not only are Professors Dorador and Atria distinguished academics in their respective fields of sciences and law, but also...

Luke de Noronha welcomes Robbie Shilliam, Professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University, to discuss his recent book 'Decolonizing Politics: An Introduction' (Polity Press, 2021). Across his writing, Robbie’s made several critical interventions on questions surrounding race, colonialism and global order, and in 'Decolonizing Politics' he methodologically looks at what it might me...

Dr Nick Witham opens this series of dissemination sessions where four of UCL Institute of the Americas active researchers talk about their current research activity