On #BlackLivesMatter #BritainIsNotInnocent Time and date: Friday 17 July, 3-5pm GMT In light of recent anti-Black violence at the hands of the American state, the world has erupted in protest against systemic racism. The Black Lives Matter movement, which was a fringe organization over the past decade, is now leading the charge and discussions about defunding the police. At SOAS we know that silence is violence. Objectively, Black Lives Matter!
Bringing together a number of thinkers who are active in anti-racism work - including but not limited to anti-Blackness, Islamophobia and antisemitism - this panel will explore how we define racism and how we can challenge it.
Global research in humanities and social sciences around the world has been historically embedded in a dominant Anglo-American theoretical framework that has favoured its own traditions of knowledge generation, validation and scope, reflecting hierarchical relations rooted in the colonial past. In recent years, ethnocentric and racialised paradigms of knowledge have been profoundly challenged in different contexts, reflecting on movements to decolonise curricula, pedagogy and theoretical thinking. However, much less attention has been given to the structural and institutionalised mechanisms of research development, funding and dissemination and how these may or may not be conducive to the diversification and decolonisation of knowledge production in the world.
