NACBS Diversity and Inclusion Fellowship

2023

Rochelle Malcolm (Columbia University).

• Rochelle Malcolm’s research on the social and cultural history of Brixton as a site of grassroots activism from 1970 to 2000 broadens our understanding of the wide-ranging cast of participants who helped to shape local community life in London during the latter half of the twentieth century. Her work pays attention to second-generation African and Caribbean Britons, the Asian community and the LGBTQ community who lived and worked in Brixton. Through her research, Malcolm will intentionally build an oral history archive to contribute to the community’s efforts to preserve Brixton's history.

There was one Honorable Mention:

Bright Alozie (Portland State University), “Voices in Ink: Petitions, Petition Writing, and the Colonial State in Igboland, Nigeria.”

• Dr. Alozie’s current book project, a revision of his doctoral dissertation, revolves around hundreds of previously untapped petitions, dubbed “voices in ink,” addressed to British officials by subjects of colonial Igboland, Nigeria. By exploring these understudied sources, he brings together multiple perspectives to engage with petition writing beyond an avenue for registering discontent about colonial rule to include knowledge production and identity construction in colonial Nigeria. “Voices in Ink” prompts us to rethink African colonial studies and British imperialism.

2022

Jade Bentil (Oxford University) “‘We used our place in the world to imagine ourselves differently’: Black Feminist Activism and the Politics of Race, Nation and Empire in Britain, 1968-1988⁠.” 

• Jade Bentil’s research seeks to expand our understanding of Black British women’s contributions to Black feminist history.  Drawing from oral histories conducted with Black women activists, Bentil’s work explores how Black women built autonomous spaces to organize in the service of capacious visions of social justice and Black liberation.  In addition to adding much-needed texture to our understanding of Black women’s lives in Britain during the late twentieth century, Bentil work challenges dominant narratives of feminist organizing in Britain during the late twentieth century and sheds light on the myriad ways that Black women leveraged their marginality in British society to contemplate radical post-imperial futures.

Diversity and Inclusion Fellowship Honorable Mention

Leonard Butingan (UC Santa Cruz) “Black Anti-Racist Activism and the Afterlife of Empire: Britain 1976-2000.”

• Interrogating how activists grappled with the legacies of empire as postcolonial praxis is at the fore of Leonard Butingan’s research.  With a focus on understudied historical actors including Black feminists, queer intellectuals, independent film makers, radical current affairs stars and local grassroots activists, Butingan’s work examines how Black Britons operating across a number of domains understood racism, sexism and homophobia in Britain as part of a neocolonial order and in relation Black transnational liberation movements.  Butingan’s ground-breaking research historicizes Black globality in the late twentieth century and offers critical analysis of the ways that Black activists and intellectuals imagined anti-racism beyond the nation-state.

Jada Gannaway (Michigan State University) “The Political Biography of Althea Jones-Lecointe.”

• With a focus on the life and legacy of Althea Jones-Lecointe, a central figure in the London-based Black Power movement, Jada Gannaway’s study examines the political realities confronting Black communities in Britain during the long 1970s.  Gannaway’s research interrogates how Black Caribbeans like Jones-Lecointe articulated expectations of citizenship and highlights how developments including shifting immigration policies influenced how Black political organizations mobilized in defense of Black rights.  In doing so Gannaway’s project positions Black women activists like Jone-Lecointe as key strategists in shaping campaigns against state violence that confronted a range of range of social issues including police violence, housing and education.