A group protesting in a rally organised by the West Indian Student Centre, May 1970. Courtesy of Black Cultural Archives, ref no: PHOTOS/173, photographer unknown.

11 October 2023

By Uduma Ogenyi, PhD student at SOAS/IOE.

When considering what it means to build solidarities, particularly in the context of discussions around ‘decolonising’ universities today, there is much to learn from lessons of the past. My research is funded by a Bloomsbury Studentship and explores the day-to-day experiences of Black students on university campuses from 1956-1981, with a focus on SOAS, UCL and IOE (then a separate college of the University of London). In this period students in London were active in a range of anti-imperialist and anti-racist struggles, including the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the fight against the National Front. At the same time, however, Black students faced isolation, loneliness, racism, and discrimination on campus.

Why do Black students’ day-to-day experiences of discrimination so rarely inform our writing of student histories? And what can these experiences tell us about the struggles students face today, especially in the context of institutional co-option of radical demands? (more…)

Film screening and debate at University College London, 15 December 2022

22 December 2022

By Sabina Barone, Social Science MPhil/PhD

‘This film is about ghosts. Ghosts of the past that even while they slumbered have continued to influence the present’ wrote Rob Lemkin, the director of the docu-drama ‘African Apocalypse’ screened at UCL on December 15th 2022. The ghosts are those of the victims of the 1899 French mission in what is now Niger, the uncountable men, women, and children brutally assassinated, whose obliteration broke the continuity with the ancestors and whose pain still troubles their descendants. But those ghosts are also the spectres of the perpetrators’ evil conscience, the ruthless inhumanity at the core of the so-called civilising mission of colonialism.

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