My name is Edward Ademolu and I’m a Dr. of International Development and current LSE fellow in Qualitative Research Methodology at the Department of Methodology.
This year’s ‘Black365’ theme and my involvement in the showcase is serendipitous, given that it is a year since I last featured in the ‘Young, Gifted & Black’ Inspirational BME Staff Showcase 2020' and here I am again, immortalised in yet another obligatory (and awkwardly rendered) bathroom selfie. When asked to contribute a statement on what ‘Black365’ meant to me, I entertained the farfetched possibility that it referred to some hitherto unknown latest competitor on the Cloud Storage or Cyber Security scene, for which I was tasked to submit my layman’s opinion. Suffice to say, this was not the parameter of interpretation the Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) team expected.
In all seriousness, upon a more considered reflection, I concluded that the theme alluded to the reality that ‘Blackness’ (in all its particularities) and Black Consciousness, ought not to be understood as discontinuous from the historical materialisms of contemporary life and intellectual thought. Nor should it be conceived as an incidental accompaniment to the abundant ‘entrée’ of western white-racialised knowledge production and accomplishment. Or perhaps an instagrammable moment of ephemeral public visibility circumscribed to October’s annual preoccupation.
Rather, the theme positively denotes a Blackness with an indefinite leave to remain, without cause to prove a meritorious claim— a rightful permanence of British settlement beyond October’s 31 days. Better yet, it suggests a certain normalcy in/of Blackness which is almost Godly in its airy omnipresence spanning across the seasons of time.