In 2023 Hakim Adi’s African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History was shortlisted for the prestigious Wolfson History Prize.
In the same year, and despite developing and supervising probably the largest cohort of Black postgraduate history students in the country, his ground-breaking MRes in the History of Africa and the African Diaspora was terminated and he was dismissed from his post at the University of Chichester.
It is now over 60 years since a professor of history at the University of Oxford infamously declared ‘Perhaps in the future there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none, only the history of Europeans in Africa.’
It might be hoped that such Eurocentrism had long been dead, but too often it appears to be alive, if not well, and still a major problem in the study and teaching of history in this country.
In this lecture Hakim Adi reflects on how affirming the history of African and Caribbean people enhances the study of the history of Britain and why a struggle against Eurocentrism in all its forms is still so important in HE and beyond.
Location: University of Exeter Newman Red Lecture Theatre, Stocker Road Exeter EX4 4QD
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