Prof. Hakim Adi was the first historian of African heritage to become a professor of history in Britain when he was appointed Professor of the History of Africa and the African Diaspora at the University of Chichester in 2015.

In 2018 he launched the world’s first online MRes in the History of Africa and the African Diaspora which trained many students and produced seven students who are currently engaged in PhD research . In August 2023 the University of Chichester suspended all recruitment to the MRes and terminated Hakim’s employment.

Hakim was instrumental in the founding of the History Matters initiative in 2014 and is also the founder and consultant historian of the Young Historians Project. http://younghistoriansproject.org/ He has appeared in many documentary films, on TV and on radio and has written widely on the history of Africa and the African Diaspora, including three history books for children. His publications have been translated into French, Spanish and Portuguese and include: West Africans in Britain 1900-60: Nationalism, Pan-Africanism and Communism (Lawrence and Wishart, 1998); (with M. Sherwood) The 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress Revisited (New Beacon, 1995) and Pan-African History: Political Figures from Africa and the Diaspora since 1787 (Routledge, 2003).

His most recent books are Pan-Africanism and Communism: The Communist International, Africa and the Diaspora, 1919-1939 (Africa World Press, 2013), Pan-Africanism: A History (Bloomsbury Press, 2018) and, as editor Black British History: New Perspectives (Zed, 2019), Black Voices on Britain (Macmillan, 2022) and Many Struggles: New Histories of African and Caribbean People in Britain (Pluto, 2023). His latest publication is Africa and Caribbean People in Britain: A History (Allen Lane, 2023) which was shortlisted for the prestigious Wolfson History Prize in September 2023.