The Department of Sociology continued its Research Seminar Series with Kehinde Andrews (Birmingham City University)

Title: The Battle for Black Studies

 

Chair: Jo Littler

 

Date: 01.11.2017

 

In September 2017, the first Black Studies degree in Europe was launched at Birmingham City University. Far from this being a celebration of Black perspectives at universities, the aim is to use the opportunity to use the university space to help develop what Abdul Alkalimaat called the ‘science of liberation’. Black Studies has a long history in the UK, being done in the grassroots in community organisations and supplementary schools. This talk will discuss the importance of developing a critical Black Studies and the tensions of housing the degree and research in a university space. Black Studies, it argues, is essential – but can it flourish in the institutionally racist space of the university?

 

Dr KehindeAndrews is Associate Professor of Sociology, and has been leading the development of the Black Studies Degree at Birmingham City University. His book Black Radicalism will be published in July 2018. He recently co-edited Blackness in Britain (2016) and his first book was Resisting Racism: Race, Inequality and the Black Supplementary School Movement (2013). Kehinde is director of the Centre for Critical Social Research; founder of the Organisation of Black Unity; and co-chair of the Black Studies Association.

 

For more information on The Department of Sociology Research Seminar Series, organised by Dr Jo Littler, please click on the link below:

https://www.city.ac.uk/arts-social-sciences/sociology#unit=research