UCL Institute of Advanced Studies

Dr Patricio Simonetto (UCL Americas) talks about his current research projects.

Dr Malu Gatto (UCL Institute of the Americas) shares the latest in her research projects, interests and experiences.

Dr Hayes de Kalaf's research offers uncomfortable insights into the use and abuse of modern-day identity-based development 'solutions' for exclusionary and citizenship-stripping practices. At this pre-launch of her first book, "Legal Identity, Race and Belonging in the Dominican Republic: From Citizen to Foreigner", Dr Hayes de Kalaf will present the definitive analysis of the events leading up to...

We were delighted to host Dr Amy C. Offner (Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania) as our guest to deliver the UCL Institute of the Americas 2021 Eleanor Roosevelt Lecture on June 3, 2021. She provided an overview of her latest book, 'Sorting Out the Mixed Economy: The Rise and Fall of Welfare and Developmental States in the Americas (Princeton University Press, 2019). I...

These regiments were present during the Chesapeake campaign of 1814 and the Battle of New Orleans in 1815 but, more importantly, the idea of the West India Regiments loomed large in the American imagination. Concerns that black soldiers might entice wholesale desertion by enslaved people directed US military policy and even though the military contribution of the West India Regiments turned out to...

One of the ways in which eugenics became incorporated into mainstream society all around the world was through the birth control movement. Early twentieth-century birth control pioneers like Marie Stopes and Margaret Sanger were also ardent eugenicists, and their motives were bound up with imperial concerns about, as eugenicists saw it, the deterioration of the 'white race'. Their arguments were t...

The places and spaces we inhabit profoundly affect our lives and how we live them in ways we need to think about more critically. At the launch of the project that is the subject of today's episode, Kamna Patel spoke to how people have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic by saying "It is not who we are and what we eat that will kill us, but where we live and where we work." Subhadra’s guests in...

Along with being inherently racist, eugenics was also an inherently ableist concern. In this episode Subhadra speaks to experts in the field of disability studies to explore the ways in which power delineates difference between people, and how this relates to the much broader structures of our society, as well as how we think and perceive of ourselves. Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisatio...

Two of the fields where eugenic thinking had an enormous influence, and where some of its legacies continue to hold sway are Psychology and Education Studies. An influential figure in both those fields was a former UCL Professor of Psychology, Sir Cyril Burt. In this episode Subhadra and her guests wade through Burt’s legacy and reflect on how to confront and confound eugenic thinking in both thes...

This episode documents and commemorates a collaborative research project at UCL, which brought together geneticists, historians, archaeologists and museum curators to consider how science mediates the dilemma of death. It was called Curating Heads and its scientific aims were to use the latest techniques in Ancient DNA analysis to sequence the genomes of two historic figures at UCL: the philosophe...

It has often been argued that eugenicists were not real scientists, but almost all of their ideas were grounded in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century scientific discourse. Science is a social and a socialised endeavour. Scientists are people, and their work is embodied in the social and historical contexts in which they live. In this episode, Subhadra speaks to science historians and comm...

When Peruvian public intellectual José Carlos Agüero was a child, the government imprisoned and executed his parents, who were members of Shining Path. In The Surrendered—originally published in Spanish in 2015 and appearing here in English for the first time—Agüero reflects on his parents' militancy and the violence and aftermath of Peru's internal armed conflict. He examines his parents' radical...

Our latest Short Takes comes from Ian Sanjay Patel, author of the new book 'We’re Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire' (Verso, 2021). This important book provides a global history of post-war migration to the UK, offering fresh insights into the relationship between migration, citizenship and decolonization. Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/transcript-were-...

The questions will focus on the social and normative consequences of the Chilean social outbreak and the operation of the election and the Convention, focusing on gender parity, the representation of indigenous populations and the role of independent members and members elected on party lists. Our guest experts are Professors Verónica Undurraga (Constitutional Lawyer, Faculty of Law Universidad Ad...

Paige Patchin is joined by science journalist, Angela Saini, for a conversation on her book 'Superior: The Return of Race Science', discussing the resurgence of race science, pseudoscientific racial myths and problematic narratives of human difference. Angela looks at how the changing figure of the Neanderthal is an example of how the circle of humanity can be used as tool of racism in science, an...

Drawing from his new book 'American Contagions' John Fabian Witt (Yale) tells the story of the unexpected past, unwieldy present, and unsettling future of the American law of epidemics. Speaker: John Fabian Witt is Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law at Yale Law School and author of many books, including American Contagions: Epidemics and the Law from Smallpox to COVID-19 (Yale Universit...

An event part of the UCL Americas Research Network 'The Long History of the Coronavirus Crisis' lecture series. Brazil currently has the second highest COVID-related death toll in the world, behind only the United States. Circumstances are so bleak that many hospitals lack even basic medical supplies as a new, more contagious variant sweeps through Latin America’s largest nation. Drawing on theore...

Fanm Rebèl: Excavating the Histories of Haiti's Women Revolutionaries We were delighted to have hosted Nicole Willson (UCLAN-IBAR) as our distinguished guest speaker at the very well attended virtual event part of our Caribbean Studies seminar series last night. ‘The history of Haiti has been entirely written by men and for men, and one hardly finds any trace of women, of their moral, social and e...

Nicholas De Genova joins Luke de Noronha for a conversation about the relationship between bordering, migration and the pandemic, and his current thinking around The Migrant Metropolis. Nicholas discusses why it’s important to think of migrant crises as racial crises, recapturing the subjectivity of migration, and the autonomy of migration as a framework. Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisa...

Antebellum New Orleans was the nation’s ‘necropolis,’ with yellow fever routinely killing about eight percent of the population. With little epidemiological understanding of mosquito-borne viruses, a person’s only protection against the scourge was falling sick with and surviving the disease. Over time, repeated epidemics generated a hierarchy of immunocapital whereby ‘acclimated’ survivors levera...

The COVID crisis in the US has raised questions about presidential leadership, the federal system, and America's role in the world. What factors explain why different countries in the Americas have adopted such different responses to the COVID-19 pandemic? Will the COVID-19 epidemic bring an end to globalisation? We are hoping these and other pressing issues will become clearer over the roundtable...

What we see in the Hamburg lectures is a shift in Rodney’s work toward the self-activity—the occupations and 'wild-cat strikes'—of the working class, not as one of numerous players in the revolution, but as the central organizing force. Dr Leo Zeilig is a writer and researcher. He has written extensively on African politics and history, including books on working-class struggle and the development...

This presentation focuses on the role of drivers, enslaved people—usually men—who were appointed by the owners and managers of Caribbean plantations to supervise labor and maintain discipline. Drivers faced insatiable demands from enslavers and constant resistance from the people they were charged with supervising. With limited options and tools, drivers walked a precarious tightrope as they tried...

In this talk, our distinguished guest speaker Manuel Barcia (Leeds) examined the battle waged against disease, where traders fought against loss of profits while enslaved Africans fought for survival. Although efforts to control disease and stop epidemics from spreading brought little success, the medical knowledge generated by people on both sides of the conflict contributed to momentous change i...

In an extraordinary effort of synthesis, Dora Barrancos reviews proposals and actions that were undertaken by a variety of women's collectives: from the formulation of the first feminisms to the unprecedented experience of our times. During this virtual event, Dora Barrancos (Universidad de Buenos Aires) and Gabriela Cano (El Colegio de Mexico) will discuss with Patricio Simonetto (UCL Institute o...