UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre Podcast

Maki Kimura (UCL Political Science & UCL Arts and Sciences) is joined by Pragna Patel, director and founding member of Southall Black Sisters. Pragna speaks to us about the feminist and anti-racist roots of Southall Black Sisters, discussing intersectionality and structures of inequality, domestic abuse and violence against women and girls, and how the pandemic has further impacted vulnerable...

Tamar Garb is joined by  Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela , South African National Research Chair in Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma, for a conversation about her work and recent interventions into a very difficult political and social landscape in South Africa. Pumla uses social psychology and psychoanalysis to discuss the ongoing threat and challenge of racism, the intergenerational i...

Social anthropologist,  Sindre Bangstad , discusses how local memories have been mobilised in the context of the Norwegian anti-racist movement, addressing the deep racialised grammar of the national imaginary of what Norway is. Exploring examples of right-wing extremism, Sindre reflects on the 2001 murder of Benjamin Hermansen as we approach the 20-year anniversary of his death. Transcript:...

Our latest Short Take is provided by  Camilla Schofield , Senior Lecturer in Modern History at UEA. This year, in conjunction with her fellow editors Daniel Geary and Jennifer Sutton, Camilla has produced  Global White Nationalism: From Apartheid to Trump , an important anthology of writing covering different historical examples and geographical regions. Camilla talks to us about this su...

Paul Gilroy is joined by Antonella Bundu, Italian activist and council member for a left coalition, for a conversation about the politics of Florence, Italy, and her position within the polity. Antonella discusses Black presence and belonging in the Italian context, fighting for social and civil rights, and the work that still needs to be done for an anti-racist and anti-fascist society. Transcrip...

Award-winning filmmaker, Steve McQueen, joins Paul Gilroy for a conversation on the motivation for his  Small Axe  film series. McQueen addresses making something that is Black and beautiful in depicting justice and freedom, and how art can give recognition to Black British lives by shoring up  “who we are, where we came from and what we contributed to this country” . Transcript: ww...

Olivia U. Rutazibwa , Senior Lecturer in International Development and European Studies, explores rethinking international relations with a critical and anti-colonial perspective. Addressing the tearing down of statues of Leopold II in Belgium, reparations and recognition, and moving away from the language of ‘aid’, Olivia discusses decolonial thought and concepts of dignity, retreat and repair. T...

Social and cultural anthropologist  Francio Guadeloupe  joins us for a conversation on understanding the black condition and the racialisation of Muslims within the Netherlands and the Dutch Caribbean. Addressing the conviviality and creolization of the Kingdom, Francio explains the harmony and struggle that is present and looks at the changing politics of race. Transcript: www.ucl....

Gloria Wekker , author of  White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race , discusses white innocence and colour-blindness in the Netherlands; reflecting on the country’s relationship with colonialism, its lack of discourse about race, and the importance of intergenerational knowledge exchange. Gloria also looks back on her experiences in the US: the moment she learned she was black,...

Our latest Short Takes podcast is provided by  Luke de Noronha , author of  Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of deportation to Jamaica . “An ethnography of deportation, and therefore an ethnography of separation, absence and exile”, Luke talks us through the motivation for his research and its contribution to our collective understanding and shared struggles. Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/...

Acclaimed scholar of race, gender and law,  Dorothy E. Roberts  discusses the harm and health inequities produced by structural racism, with race correction in medicine disqualifying black people from specialised care, and evident collaboration of doctors and lawyers in promoting juridical ideas about race. Addressing a violent policing system that can be traced back to slave patrols and...

Tamar Garb welcomes  Jacob Dlamini  for a conversation on the limitations of racialisations and categorisations, the problematic ethnicising of blackness, and understanding the centrality of race while also understanding that race doesn't explain everything. Jacob speaks on his work exploring the role of collaborators during apartheid, and how the traumas of the children of collaborators...

Gail Lewis , psychotherapist and Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE, joins us for a conversation on Britain’s racial formation; speaking across the generational lines; and how music captures life and sustains us. Gail offers her psychoanalysis on black lives ‘mattering’ and how “ being present to the aliveness, and the moments of deadening, and the moments of possibility, even in silence, really teache...

Paul Gilroy is joined by  George the Poet , for a conversation on poetry, podcasting and storytelling; looking at how hybridity and sociological thought have impacted George’s process of intuition and priorities in advocating for his community. George also discusses how, moving forward, these priorities are evolving around communication systems, value creation and academia. Transcript: w...

Our latest Short Take is provided by  Marlene L. Daut , Professor of African Diaspora Studies at the Woodson Institute, historian of Haiti, and an important voice in the burgeoning historical archive of neglected political and cultural dynamics of the Haitian revolution. Here Marlene talks to us about a forthcoming anthology she has co-edited with Grégory Pierrot and Marion Rohrleitner, ...

David Theo Goldberg , Director of the University of California’s Humanities Research Institute, offers his insight about the state of critical thinking around race and racism, and the effacement of historicality in favour of presentism; and responds to the sanction of comparativisms and relationalities as “ racism anywhere is not possible to be upheld without racisms elsewhere ”. Transcript: www.u...

Paul Gilroy is joined by  Courtenay Griffiths QC , distinguished criminal defence advocate with 40 years of experience, for a conversation on racism within the criminal justice system and its disproportionate effect on black people, and the need to confront patterns of criminalisation, the hierarchy within institutions and reforming education in relation to this. Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/rac...

Suresh Grover, Director of the anti-racist grassroots group  The Monitoring Group , joins us to discuss his work and campaigning in the struggle against racism in Britain, the notion of black as a political colour and the vision of an inclusive political culture, and the importance of exposing the lived experiences of black communities in addressing institutional and state racism. Transcript:...

Robert Reid-Pharr , Professor of African and African American Studies as well as Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University, provides a taster of his eagerly anticipated publication of his major study on James Baldwin. Speaking on Baldwin’s former teacher, Abel Meeropol, writer of  Strange Fruit  which later became an anthem of the anti-lynching, anti-white...

This Short Take has been generously provided to us by  Suzanne Scafe , co-author of the ground-breaking 1985 book  Heart of the Race: Black Women's Lives in Britain , and known for her involvement in supplementary schooling and the Brixton Black Women's Group. In this episode, Suzanne speaks to us about her new work in process and soon for publication,  How Literature Matters: An Et...

Nikhil Pal Singh , Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and History at NYU, talks us through ‘the unfinished struggle for democracy’ and the racialised ordering of systems in the United States; the balance of forces of the right and left; and the voice of corporate multiculturalism and celebrity renunciations of white privilege in response to Black Lives Matter. Transcript: www.ucl....

Achille Mbembe , author, commentator and philosopher, addresses his recent work  The Universal Right to Breathe  and  Brutalisme  in the context of the racial disparity of deaths and racially inflicted violence; speaking on the power of witnessing in preventing others from being expropriated of their breath, and the significance of respiration at the beginning and end of l...

Distinguished writer, commentator and American legal scholar  Patricia J. Williams  joins Paul Gilroy to talk about the legacies of Critical Race Theory, the eugenic character of racialised governance and the current call to defund the police. Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/transcript-conversation-patricia-j-williams This conversation was recorded on 12th June 2020.&...

Paul Gilroy and  Gary Younge , Professor of Sociology at Manchester University and distinguished journalist, reflect on Mark Twain’s reputed words  ‘history doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes’ , the first political memories that shaped them, and the potential in engaging sympathy and humour critically. Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/transcript-conversation-gary-younge Th...

Alondra Nelson , President of the Social Science Research Council in the US and Harold F. Linder Chair in Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, joins us to question who is assumed to be the disposable demographic, and the politics of genetic data and racial biology being used to understand the ‘black body’ during the Covid-19 pandemic. Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-ra...