UCL Institute of Advanced Studies

Luke de Noronha is joined by Gavan Titley, Professor in the Department of Media Studies at Maynooth University. Gavan has written several books on race, racism and multiculturalism, with a particular focus on the generative role of media and communication, including Is Free Speech Racist? with Polity Press in 2020. They discuss the question of free speech, which has become so central to questions of native entitlement and authoritarian populism in the present. The conversation was recorded in November 2025. Speakers: Luke de Noronha and Gavan Titley

In this episode, Awa returns to conversations with guests from the first three episodes of season 2, weaving together their reflections to explore what drives us in life, and how that can take different forms across our work, our lives, and the ways we make sense of the world.

Luke de Noronha welcomes Sita Balani, Senior Lecturer in English at Queen Mary University of London and the author, most recently, of Deadly and Slick: the Sexual Life of Race in Britain (Verso Press, 2023). They discuss Sita’s recent writings on culture wars, melodrama as a mode of political communication, and the difference between the ordinary and normal. The conversation was recorded in November 2025. Speakers: Luke de Noronha and Sita Balani

In this episode, Awa is in conversation with Fuad Busoir about love – what it means, how it is recognised, and whether it’s something felt or practised. Moving between romantic relationships, friendship and family, they reflect on the ways love shapes how people relate to one another, to space, and to themselves. Along the way, they sit with questions of accountability, intention, and whether love can ever be separate from politics – or if it is always quietly structuring the worlds being built.

In this episode, Awa sits down with scholar Luke de Noronha to question what borders really do in our everyday lives. From citizenship and belonging to the politics behind “migration crises,” they explore how borders shape who belongs, who is welcomed, and who is framed as a threat.

Radical Abundance – understanding the reconfiguration of the global economy and how we might survive it Keir Milburn and Kai Heron in conversation with Gargi Bhattacharyya. This conversation was recorded in the summer of 2025 and discusses the changing role and approach of the United States and the extreme hardships arising from climate catastrophe as triggers to re-imagine the global economy. The conversation was recorded before the publication of Kai and Keir’s excellent and celebrated book, ‘Radical Abundance’, but the themes of the conversation echo the preoccupations of the book. There was a lot to discuss here – as a result we have split the conversation into three sections for ease of listening.

Radical Abundance – understanding the reconfiguration of the global economy and how we might survive it Keir Milburn and Kai Heron in conversation with Gargi Bhattacharyya. This conversation was recorded in the summer of 2025 and discusses the changing role and approach of the United States and the extreme hardships arising from climate catastrophe as triggers to re-imagine the global economy. The conversation was recorded before the publication of Kai and Keir’s excellent and celebrated book, ‘Radical Abundance’, but the themes of the conversation echo the preoccupations of the book. There was a lot to discuss here – as a result we have split the conversation into three sections for ease of listening.

Radical Abundance – understanding the reconfiguration of the global economy and how we might survive it Keir Milburn and Kai Heron in conversation with Gargi Bhattacharyya. This conversation was recorded in the summer of 2025 and discusses the changing role and approach of the United States and the extreme hardships arising from climate catastrophe as triggers to re-imagine the global economy. The conversation was recorded before the publication of Kai and Keir’s excellent and celebrated book, ‘Radical Abundance’, but the themes of the conversation echo the preoccupations of the book. There was a lot to discuss here – as a result we have split the conversation into three sections for ease of listening.

Started as a student-led project, Diaspora Diaries is now a SPRC alumni-led podcast that aims to hold space for the many ways race, migration, language, and place shape our everyday lives within the diaspora — in our relationships, our work, our bodies, and our memories — and how we negotiate these forces. One central question, carried throughout the episodes, explores how each of us relates to the concept of diaspora, whether or not we consider ourselves part of it. As the podcast unfolds, you’ll hear from scholars, artists, and people who are experts in their own lived experiences. We’re here to open up conversations, share our reflections, and invite you to join the discussion. This new season is powered by Transmission Roundhouse.

In this episode, Awa speaks with spoken word artist Tariq Brown about using poetry to make power visible. They explore how he transforms complex, often academic ideas – from capitalism to systemic oppression – into poetic, thought-provoking verse. It’s a conversation about heritage, awareness, and the poet’s role in illuminating systems of oppression.

Gala Rexer talks to Edna Bonhomme, culture writer, historian of science, journalist, and author of “A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19” (2025). The conversation covers theoretical and methodological questions about the relationship between confinement and disease, Edna’s anti/inter-disciplinary approach to writing, health and illness in literature, and how the intersectional fight for prison abolition relates to struggles for health equality. This conversation was recorded in June 2025 Speakers: Dr Gala Rexer, Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Warwick and Honorary Research Fellow at the SPRC // Dr Edna Bonhomme Producer: Gala Rexer and Trisha Hart Editors: James Fox

In this podcast, Dr Clive Chijioke Nwonka talks to the Guardian journalist Lanre Bakare about his new book, 'We Were There: How Black Culture, Resistance and Community Shaped Modern Britain'. Lanre Bakare was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire. He is a correspondent covering arts and culture for the Guardian, where his writing focuses on the intersection of art, race and culture across multiple disciplines. He was senior correspondent on the award-winning Cotton Capital project and has worked in New York and Los Angeles as part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Guardian US team. Lanre is the author of the book We Were There: How Black culture, resistance and community shaped modern Britain. This book explores a Black Britain that for too long has been unknown and unexplored – and crucially, the one that exists beyond London. Dr Clive Chijioke Nwonka is Associate Professor in Film, Culture and Society at UCL, and a Faculty Associate of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation. This conversation was recorded in August 2025 Speakers: Dr Clive Chijioke Nwonka and Lanre Bakare Producer:Trisha Hart Editor: Amie Liebowitz

In this podcast, Subhadra Das answers ten questions on ten lies that make up Western Civilisation. The conversation covers looting, the value of art, the history of statistics, remaking public history, repatriating stolen objects, and what museums and institutions could be doing with their zombies. Subhadra Das is a writer, historian, broadcaster and comedian who looks at the relationship between science and society. She specialises in the history and philosophy of science, particularly the history of scientific racism and eugenics. For nine years she was Curator of the Science Collections at University College London. She has written and presented podcasts and stand-up comedy shows, curated museum exhibitions, and has appeared on radio and TV. She is now working on a book about the golden age of detective fiction and the history of eugenics. Lara Choksey is Lecturer in Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures at UCL English, and Associate Faculty at the UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre.

In this episode, Ellen and Awa discuss European identity building and memory politics, highlighting how national narratives shape collective memory. They emphasise the selective remembrance of historical events, and its impact on national identities. Together, they examine the silencing of racialised people’s histories and experiences within discourse on national identity and how this, in turn, plays a role in the rise of xenophobia and far-right ideologies.

Stephanie discusses the valorisation of cultural heritage within the African diaspora, noting a shift in societal perception post-2020. She highlights the commodification of cultural pride by businesses and the rise of Afrobeats and other African music globally. Stephanie references the reinterpretation of cultural symbols like the Union Jack and the importance of authenticity in branding. Stephanie emphasises the fluidity of culture and the need to resist simplistic representations, concluding with her personal embrace of cultural heritage through wearing cornrows.

Discussion of Gargi’s research and the new module designed to open conversations about how we might understand the interplay between global politics and the global economy in this moment of rapid realignment. Speakers: Gargi Bhattacharyya, Paige Patchin, Luke de Noronha

Discussion of Paige’s research on questions of health, racism and why we must learn to understand the languages of the biological and the pharmaceutical if we are to grasp emerging technologies of racialisation. Speakers: Paige Patchin, Luke de Noronha, Gargi Bhattacharyya

Discussion of Luke’s research and why thinking about movement and bordering allows us understand emerging machineries of (perhaps) racialised violence. Speakers: Luke de Noronha, Paige Patchin, Gargi Bhattacharyya

In this Short Takes, Luke reads the preface to the paperback edition of Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of Deportation to Jamaica, published with Manchester University Press in June 2025.

In this episode, Awa and Jade discuss their experiences navigating morality and dealing with tensions and contradictions in their personal and professional lives. They explore the challenges of addressing systems of oppressions within their families and friendships, and break down what it means to study or work in spaces that uphold these structures. Together, they look into the importance of staying true to oneself, pushing beyond comfort zones, and finding a balance between personal and professional ethics.

In this episode, Awa and Marianne explore the concept of diaspora – is simply “being from somewhere else” enough to claim a diasporic identity? They unpack what it means to relate to a place and reflect on how diasporic experiences are shaped by history, culture, and power. The conversation also turns inward, as they grapple with the complexities of navigating positionalities within academia and the ethical implications of studying systems of oppression.

Dr Clive Chijioke Nwonka is joined by Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey. Lola Young became one of the first Black Women members of the House of Lords in 2004. Raised in foster care in north London, she studied at the New College of Speech and Drama, then worked as an actress, before becoming Professor of Cultural Studies at Middlesex University. Later, she worked in arts administration before receiving an OBE in 2001 for services to Black British History, and becoming an independent crossbench member of the House of Lords. She is active in campaigns on modern slavery and ethical fashion. Her new book, Eight weeks: Looking Back, Moving Forwards, Defying the Odds (Penguin 2024) is a deeply moving memoir that tells the remarkable life story of Baroness Young from her childhood in foster care the House of Lords. Here, Clive and Lola they discuss her latest book, its themes and some of the ideas and experiences that have shaped Lola’s writing, scholarship, and public life.

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 kinds of feminism – varieties of feminism that have not just been taken up by the regressive right, but have participated enthusiastically and feministly in these movements. In advance of her talk, Victoria Mangan met with Sophie to ask her a few questions about her new book, ‘Enemy Feminisms,’ and especially to ask her: why this book, and why now? They went on to discuss the relationship between Sophie’s current work and her previous books on family abolition, why it is that we are so attached to feminism as a unilateral ‘good’ despite evidence to the contrary, and the particular Englishness of certain feminist activism in the 21st century. ****** Sophie Lewis, an ex-academic writer, lives in Philadelphia and is the author of ‘Full Surrogacy Now, Abolish the Family,’ and ‘Enemy Feminisms.’ Her essays appear everywhere from n+1 to the LRB. She is working on an essay collection, ‘Femmephilia,’ and a book, ‘The Liberation of Children’ (forthcoming from Penguin, 2027). Victoria Mangan is a PhD student researching transgender literatures and theories. Her thesis enquires into how we read and interpret trans literature and what this growing body of work might offer literary criticism as a discipline. She is a Wolfson scholar in the humanities and has taught across several departments at UCL. Lewis and Mangan are introduced by Alex Hyde, Associate Professor in Gender Studies and Co-Director of the Gender and Feminism Research Network at UCL. The episode was produced by Marthe Lisson, Editor of Think Pieces.

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 community, and the balance between theory and practice. They also touch on the history of inclusive Queer and POC spaces, Dom’s experience at PXSSY PALACE and the challenges of maintaining these party spaces!

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.

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.

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, about education and career, about friendships and intimacy. Basically, it's just about two girls from the African diaspora trying to negotiate with this world. We'll be drawn on politics, literature, history, pop culture, and thinkers like Audre Lorde, Mame-Fatou Niang and even a touch of Paul Gilroy to help us explore how our past shapes our present, and how we, in turn, navigate it. As this podcast progresses, you'll hear from scholars, students, poets and other voices. So, heads up, we are not the voice of the people, nor are we the voice of reason. We just want to share our thoughts with you and invite you to partake in our discussion. So, sit back, grab a drink or two, and maybe a journal, because this is diaspora diaries."

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 science might tell us about national identity. Discussing Vron’s book, Return of a Native (Repeater 2022), and their shared interest in the organic chemist Justus von Liebig, the conversation addresses the many scales operating in our sense of the local, from the parochial to the planetary.

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 this podcast, they’ll be discussing George’s latest book, its themes, their shared experiences growing up in North West London, and some of the ideas that formed and shaped George’s writing and intellectual work.

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 the 1992 Los Angeles Race Riots, 'No Humans Involved' (1994), the discussion ranges across fudged data, AI facial surveillance, the pseudo-science of white supremacy, and why a concept of the human beyond the purely biological matters. Ben Woodard is an affiliated fellow at the ICI in Berlin. He received his PhD in Theory and Criticism from Western University in 2016. He regularly lectures at the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy, the School of Materialist Research, and the New Centre for Research and Practice. He has two forthcoming books: Uninhabited: Science Fiction and the Decolonial (Zero Books) and F.H. Bradley and the History of Philosophy: Animating a Lost Idealism (Edinburgh University Press). Camille Crichlow is a PhD candidate at the UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation. Her research interrogates how the historical and socio-cultural narrative of race manifests in contemporary algorithmic surveillance technologies. Her PhD project traces the historical expansion of biometric facial surveillance, considering both its present and historical iterations within evolving regimes of racial thinking. Lara Choksey is Lecturer in Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures in UCL English, and Faculty Associate in the UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre. Transcript available here: www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisati…on-alexandre-white www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/

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 in Victorian and contemporary horror and figures of the monstrous, the role of health regulations in the making of racial difference in the Middle East, and a humanistic approach to sociology and history. Transcript available here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/transcript-conversation-alexandre-white www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/

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 lecture: what is it about statues that has spooked people in the past enough to arouse in them the impulse to destroy. Standing in front of the Gandhi statue in Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, London they reflect on why statues have become the ground on which struggles around caste and race are played out and why Gandhi statues in particular have become objects of contestation despite the common association of Gandhi as an anti-colonial figure. They move on to talk about statues as gifts from one country to another and whether it is violence to damage, deface or removing a statue. Above the whole conversation lingers the question: what is the future of statues - have they become obsolete? ****** Rahul Rao is Reader in International Political Thought in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews and the author of Out of Time: The Queer Politics of Postcoloniality (2020) and Third World Protest: Between Home and the World (2010). He is currently writing a book about statues. Sean Curran is an inclusive heritage specialist with 17 years of experience working in historic houses, libraries, archives and museums. Their PhD at UCL Institute of Education was about LGBTQ+ heritage, and they curated the first ever LGBT History Month exhibition at a National Trust property. Rao and Curran are introduced by Alex Hyde, Associate Professor in Gender Studies and Co-Director of the Gender and Feminism Research Network at UCL. The episode was produced by Marthe Lisson, Editor of Think Pieces.

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 the author of Paper Tiger: Law Bureaucracy and the Developmental State in Himalayan India, which addresses everyday bureaucratic life on the Himalayan borderland. Her second book, Crooked Cats: Beastly Encounters in the Anthropocene (University of Chicago Press, 2021) is the starting point for this episode’s conversation. Arigho-Stiles, Suarez and Mathur embark on a discuss the term 'anthropocene', conservation practices and its bureaucratic challanges, including the impossibility of applying Western conservation practices to Indian species (and for that matter, non-Western natural environments more broadly). ****** Olivia Arigho-Stiles and Adriana Suarez were postdoctoral research fellows at the Institute of Advanced Studies in 2023. Arigho-Stiles is an interdisciplinary researcher of Indigenous histories and the rural world in Bolivia, focussing on Bolivian Indigenous-campesino movements. She is a lecturer in Latin American studies at the University of Essex. Suarez Delucchi is a geographer working on natural resource management institutions at different scales in contested environments. Her work seeks to identify, address and challenge the marginalisation of rural and Indigenous groups from dominant management arrangements. Together, they co-edited a special issue of the IAS online review Think Pieces which you can read here: The episode was produced by Marthe Lisson, editor of Think Pieces.

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 literatures and cultures, and postcolonial and subaltern studies theory. He is a co-founding member of the binational Maya anti-colonial collective, Ix’balamquej Junajpu Wunaq’. He is also the author of the book Le Maya Q’atzij/Our Maya Word. Poetics of Resistance in Guatemala (2021) that is the starting point for this episode’s conversation. Arigho-Stiles, Suarez and Keme embark on a discussion about the relationship between poetry and resistance, the right to exist for Maya peoples and the struggle to keep their languages alive. They touch upon the idea of plurinationality and the ethos of translating. ****** Olivia Arigho-Stiles and Adriana Suarez were postdoctoral research fellows at the Institute of Advanced Studies in 2023. Arigho-Stiles is an interdisciplinary researcher of Indigenous histories and the rural world in Bolivia, focussing on Bolivian Indigenous-campesino movements. She is a lecturer in Latin American studies at the University of Essex. Suarez Delucchi is a geographer working on natural resource management institutions at different scales in contested environments. Her work seeks to identify, address and challenge the marginalisation of rural and Indigenous groups from dominant management arrangements. Together, they co-edited a special issue of the IAS online review Think Pieces which you can read here: https://thinkpieces-review.co.uk/indigenous-ecologies-environmental-crisis/ The episode was produced by Marthe Lisson, editor of Think Pieces.

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 certain pieces of music that were composed and performed during the war? Have they changed at all and if so, what does it tell us? ****** Zoltán Kékesi's research evolves around “Final Account: Third Reich Testimonies”, a collection of interviews by British documentary filmmaker Luke Holland. Between 2008 and 2017, Holland interviewed German and Austrian, non-Jewish men and women who as children and adolescents had joined the Hitler Youth or League of German Girls. To trigger memories, he asked interviewees to sing songs of their childhood. Even when they refused to sing, songs took interviewees back in time and with the songs resurfaced experiences and personal stories of past times. His essay “A Pandora’s Box: The Horst Wessel Song in the Collection ‘Final Account: Third Reich Testimonies’” is available to read here: https://compromised-identities.org/musical-memories/ Neil Gregor has worked extensively on the cultural history of music in twentieth century Germany. His book, The Symphony Concert in Nazi Germany, is forthcoming with The University of Chicago Press. The episode was produced by Marthe Lisson, editor of Think Pieces, and supported by the https://pearsfoundation.org.uk/

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 organisations and events. Why does music tend to evoke much more positive than negative emotions regardless of the emotion the music is expressing? And what is the ‘reminiscence bump’? ****** Zoltán Kékesi's research evolves around “Final Account: Third Reich Testimonies”, a collection of interviews by British documentary filmmaker Luke Holland. Between 2008 and 2017, Holland interviewed German and Austrian, non-Jewish men and women who as children and adolescents had joined the Hitler Youth or League of German Girls. To trigger memories, he asked interviewees to sing songs of their childhood. Even when they refused to sing, songs took interviewees back in time and with the songs resurfaced experiences and personal stories of past times. His essay “A Pandora’s Box: The Horst Wessel Song in the Collection ‘Final Account: Third Reich Testimonies’” is available to read here: https://compromised-identities.org/musical-memories/ Kelly Jakubowski’s research examines a range of topics within music psychology and empirical musicology, including memory for music, music-evoked autobiographical memory, musical imagery and imagination, earworms, absolute pitch, musical timing and movement, and cross-cultural music perception. She co-leads Durham’s Music and Science Lab, an interdisciplinary research group united by interests in empirical, computational, and biological approaches to understanding music listening and music making, and she is the Co-Director of Durham’s Centre for Research into Inner Experience. The episode was produced by Marthe Lisson, editor of Think Pieces, and supported by the https://pearsfoundation.org.uk/

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 studies, and queer of colour critique does to our understanding of race, gender, and affect, and how we approach literary and cultural text as theory. They discuss how their citational practices shape teaching and scholarship, and explore the modes of affective disobedience that engender counter-intimacies and new forms of decolonial solidarity. Transcript available here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/podcasts/transcript-conversation-xine-yao www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/

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 the liminal space of fugitivity as a mode of experimentation, ambivalence, and disidentification from the figure of the Human. Transcript available here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/conversation-akwugo-emejulu www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/

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 Atlantic between the two world wars. Musab gathers the work of writers and poets, journalists and editors, historians and political theorists whose insights speak urgently to contemporary movements for liberation. Transcript available here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/conversation-musab-younis www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/

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/racism-racialisation/

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 demanding free movement for all and an end to Europe’s border violence. This conversation charts those urgent political struggles by and for people on the move.  Transcript: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/transcript-conversation-maurice-stierl This conversation was recorded on 15th December 2022. Speakers: Dr Luke de Noronha, Lecturer in Race, Ethnicity & Postcolonial Studies, SPRC // Maurice Stierl, researcher at Osnabrück University in Germany Producers: Dr Luke de Noronha and Lucy Stagg Editors: Kaissa Karhu www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/podcasts

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 recorded on 25th October 2022. Speakers: Gala Rexer, postdoctoral fellow at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre // Françoise Vergès, political scientist, historian, film producer, independent curator, activist and public educator.  Producer:  Julia Thomas and Lucy Stagg Editors: Amie Liebowitz and Kaissa Karhu www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/podcasts

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 'Brown Goods' (excerpt), 2020 HD digital film, colour with sound - single channel https://youtu.be/4RJxFRBjqws courtesy the artist Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/transcript-conversation-karimah-ashadu This conversation was recorded on 2nd September 2022 Speakers: Lara Choksey is Lecturer in Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures at UCL English, and Faculty Associate at the UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre. // Karimah Ashadu is a British-born Nigerian artist and recipient of the 2020 ars viva Prize for Visual Arts Producer and editor: Kaissa Karhu www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/podcasts

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 Traveller communities in England since 1960, and the complacency and the complicity in racist practices in higher education. Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/transcript-conversation-coretta-phillips This conversation was recorded on 20th May 2022 Speakers: Clive Nwonka, Lecturer in Film, Culture and Society at UCL’s Institute of Advanced Studies // Coretta Phillips, Professor of Criminology and Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science Producer: Kaissa Karhu Editor: Amie Liebowitz and Kaissa Karhu www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/podcasts

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 mapping of Henrietta Lacks’ HeLa cells and his own journey into Black feminist thought. Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/transcript-conversation-james-doucet-battle This conversation was recorded on 9th June 2022 Speakers: Paige Patchin, Lecturer in Race, Ethnicity & Postcolonial Studies, UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre // James Doucet-Battle, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz // Alya Harding, Elinor Gibbs and Liz Kombate, MA students in Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonial Studies at UCL Producer and Editor: Kaissa Karhu www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/podcasts

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, migration and bordering, and the precarity expanding across so many different sectors in our society. Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/transcript-conversation-kojo-koram This conversation was recorded on 15th April 2022 Speakers: Luke de Noronha, Lecturer in Race, Ethnicity & Postcolonial Studies, UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre // Kojo Koram, Lecturer in Law at Birkbeck School of Law, University of London Producer: Kaissa Karhu Editors: Anita Langary and Kaissa Karhu www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/podcasts

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 and racism. Trigger warning: reference to threat of sexual assault and violent imagery (12:45 – 13:05) Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/transcript-conversation-shakuntala-banaji This conversation was recorded on 15th March 2022 Speakers: Clive Nwonka, Lecturer in Film, Culture and Society at UCL’s Institute of Advanced Studies // Shakuntala Banaji, Professor of Media, Culture and Social Change at LSE Producer: Kaissa Karhu Editors: Amie Liebowitz and Kaissa Karhu www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/podcasts

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-American and African diasporic studies: in the classroom, in the world, and in the planet. Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/transcript-conversation-farah-jasmine-griffin This conversation was recorded on 18th February 2022 Speakers: Clive Nwonka, Lecturer in Film, Culture and Society at UCL’s Institute of Advanced Studies // Farah Jasmine Griffin, William B. Ransford Professor of English and Comparative Literature and African American Studies at Columbia University Image: Photo © Peggy Dillard Toone Producer: Kaissa Karhu Editors: Anita Langary and Kaissa Karhu www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/podcasts

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' draws on the experience of Latin America, one of the most unequal regions of the world, to demonstrate how inequality has hampered economic growth, contributed to a lack of good jobs, weakened democracy, and led to social divisions and mistrust. In turn, low growth, exclusionary politics, violence and social mistrust have reinforced inequality, generating various vicious circles. Latin America thus provides a disturbing image of what the future may hold in other countries if we do not act quickly. It also provides some useful lessons on how to fight income concentration and build more equitable societies. Event date: January 20, 2022