Please see below for a list of events organised by different departments and teams across our School.
For events organised by the LSE Students' Union, click here.
Black History Month events across LSE
Location: 2nd Floor, Marshall Building (MAR 2.07)
Debates on decolonising universities have grown in prominence in recent years, yet within these conversations voices from the global South are often sidelined to centre Western perspectives. Striving to overturn educational, teaching and research practices rooted in colonial and Euro-centric histories, can universities engage with meaningful reform if these debates are cut off from the regions decolonial aspirations seek to engage?
The Eden Centre is pleased to be hosting a conversation between Olivia Umurerwa Rutazibwa and Abigail Tshola both from the Department of Sociology to discuss whether decolonising has been colonised by Western knowledge and perspectives.
Book your place
This event is capped at 20 people.
Speakers:
Olivia Umurerwa Rutazibwa, Assistant Professor in Human Rights, Department of Sociology
Abigail Tshola MSc student Political Sociology, LSE
Chair:
Akile Ahmet, Head of Inclusive Education, LSE, Eden Centre for Educational Enhancement
The staff workshop will be led by Ayan Ali, LSE Staff and Student Counsellor. Start your week on a positive note. Join this Wednesday lunchtime online workshop to celebrate culture as a source of confidence and resistance in hard times, especially when we experience being othered or discriminated against because of our ethnicity.
- How much of our heritage culture do we feel comfortable bringing into our working environment?
- Which cultural ties do we want to discover or strengthen?
We’ll discuss big and small everyday things we can do to connect with our heritage in a meaningful way such as food, clothing, hair, music, art and stories.
This workshop is for LSE staff who identify as Black, Asian and minority ethnic. Additional ticket information
- It’ll be an interactive workshop with group discussion so we ask that you have your camera on.
- It’s a lunchtime workshop so you’re welcome to bring and eat your lunch.
- If you wish, there’s an open invitation to bring something that reminds you of your heritage to the Zoom event. For example, it could be something you’re wearing, an object, or your virtual Zoom background.
- You’re invited to post things on the interactive Padlet board that strengthens your cultural identity using words, images, music and video e.g. photos of your favourite homemade food, photos, proverbs or sayings, YouTube video links to dance or music. The link to Padlet is accessible 1 week before the event. You can post anonymously and see what others have shared. EmbRace may share it within LSE afterwards and spread the joy.
Facilitator Bio
Ayan Ali is a part-time Staff and Student Counsellor at LSE with many years of experience in Higher Education mental health support. She is a psychotherapist, executive and group coach, consultant, and trainer. Ayan helps clients navigate complex questions around identity, work and relationships so they can make meaningful life changes and feel better.
Register Here
In celebration of Black History Month 2022, the Department of Anthropology invites current students, fellows, and staff to a screening of John Akomfrah's "The Stuart Hall Project," a documentary video essay on the times and life of one of the UK's most prominent Black intellectuals, and a founder of Cultural Studies and the New Left.
The screening will be followed by an open conversation about race, colonialism, and UK institutions of higher education in Hall's time and today, moderated by Dr. Yazan Doughan.
The event is open to the wider LSE community, but Anthropology students, fellows, and staff are particularly welcomed to attend. When registering, please use the appropriate ticket category to indicate your affiliation.
Snacks and refreshments will be served.
Register Here
In commemoration of Black History Month in the UK, join Professor Nemata Blyden (GWU) and Dr Robtel Neajai Pailey (LSE) for this lunchtime seminar to celebrate the publication of Professor Blyden's new book, African Americans & Africa: A New History. Hosted by the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa.
Professor Blyden's new research is an introduction to the complex relationship between African Americans and the African continent. What is an “African American” and how does this identity relate to the African continent? Rising immigration levels, globalization, and the United States’ first African American president have all sparked new dialogue around the question. This book provides an introduction to the relationship between African Americans and Africa from the era of slavery to the present, mapping several overlapping diasporas.
The presentation of the book, African Americans & Africa, will last 40 minutes, after which Dr Pailey will chair a Q&A with attendees invited to ask questions about the book and its topics.
Register Here
To celebrate Black History Month, join us for this conversation with Olivia Umurerwa Rutazibwa.
Meet Our Speaker
Olivia Umurerwa Rutazibwa (@o_rutazibwa) is Assistant Professor in Human Rights and Politics at the Department of Sociology, LSE. She is a Belgian/Rwandan International Relations scholar and former journalist and Senior Research Fellow of the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Studies (JIAS), South Africa. She holds a PhD in Political Science/International Relations from Ghent University (2013, Belgium), following the doctoral training programme at the European University Institute (2001-6, Italy) and internships at the European Commission in Brussels and the EU Institute for Security Studies in Paris (2003-4). Before joining LSE, she was Senior Lecturer in European and International (Development) Studies at the University of Portsmouth. (2013-21, UK).
Her research and teaching focuses on ways to decolonise (international) solidarity. Building on epistemic Blackness as methodology, she turns to recovering and reconnecting philosophies and practices of dignity and repair and retreat in the postcolony (e.g. autonomous recovery in Somaliland, agaciro in Rwanda and Black Power in the US, Tricontinentalism and the political thought of Thomas Sankara) to theorise solidarity anticolonially.
Get your free ticket
Location: The Marshall Building 44 Lincoln's Inn Fields London WC2A 2ES
A fun high energy dance fitness class delivered by LSESU's Iesha Lucci. You won’t feel like you’re working out because you’ll be partying too hard! With simple steps and varied themes you’ll find a variety of tracks that will have you partying while you keep fit!
In celebration of Black History Month, Iesha will teach you moves that will give you confidence to get on any dance floor in the future - All Fitness Levels welcome! Try it, you just might like it! This event has been brought to you by LSE's EmbRace Staff Network.
Register here
Join Dr Imaobong Umoren and Dr Jake Subryan Richards for a conversation about their latest research into histories of slavery and freedom in a world of Atlantic empires.
Location: Graham Wallace Room
No registration required!
Location: CLM 4.02
This event comprises of a screening of the ‘Lovers Rock’ episode part of the Small Axe’s series that Steve McQueen produced for the BBC in 2020. Instead of emphasising Black suffering, this episode was often framed as a celebration of Black joy. The screening is followed by a discussion on the tension between commemoration and celebration in representing Black British history on the screen.
We welcome LSE students, alumni, and staff to celebrate Blackness through discussion, reflection, and open dialogue. Please come and join us!
Dr Suzanne Temwa Gondwe Harris is LSE Fellow in Media, Communication and Development in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her current research is looking into the habitual denial and invisibility of Afro-descendants in South America and the commodification of Blackness by (I)NGOs in Africa.
Dr Clive Nwonka is Associate Professor in Film, Culture and Society at the IAS at UCL, and a Faculty Associate of the UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation. His research centres on the study of Black British and African American film, with a particular focus on the images of Black urbanity and the modes through which Black identities are shaped by representations of social environments, architecture, social anxieties and the hegemony of neoliberalism within forms of Black popular culture.
Dr Wendy Willems is Associate Professor and Deputy Head of the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Register Here
Location: CBG 1.04
Book: Their Eyes Are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
In celebration of Black History Month, Embrace and Power are collaborating to hold an event. Come along to our joint book club event. We won’t be discussing one book in particular, but rather we invite people to come along and share a book, poem or text by a woman of colour that has influenced or inspired them.
Lunch and refreshments will be provided.
Register Here
Location: Grand Hall, Marshall Building
EmbRace will be hosting an end of Black History Month Celebration.
More details to follow shortly!
Ongoing campaigns celebrating Black History Month
Sisters doing it for themselves...
This social media campaign run across October and is organised by the LSE Library and EmbRace to celebrate four outstanding Black British women across the month. These profiles will be featured on a dedicated Twitter page.
Black Excellence at LSE
Another social media campaign by our Library featuring materials from our collections, but also individuals such as Eugenia Charles and Eslanda Robeson.
Black History Month recommendations from the LSE Library
This year, LSE Library wants to compile a Black History Month reading list, and we want the whole LSE community to contribute.
You can recommend any title - fiction, non-fiction, journal articles, websites or blogs - the only prerequisite is that the focus is Black history, heritage and culture.
Please follow this link to submit your recommendations!