Racism and bigotry are on the rise in Britain. This round table brings together academics, writers, journalists and activists to discuss how racial prejudice is impacting our communities and how the growing hostility to immigrants and widespread Islamophobia are disrupting community relations and personal lives. Various forms of structural, institutional and community racism and bigotry are becoming more and more visible in Britain and abroad. Political establishments and the media face a difficult challenge tackling these issues, and so do schools and universities. This round table is one attempt to engage directly and openly with some of the controversial issues surrounding bigotry and racism in our communities.
Shaista Aziz
Shaista is a freelance journalist, broadcaster, opinion writer and political commentator. Her work has been published by The BBC, The Guardian, The New York Times, Huffington Post, Dawn and other international publications. She is a writer and an anti-racism and women's rights campaigner. She is the co-founder of the Women's Advancement Hub, WAH, Pakistan and Intersectional Feminist Foreign Policy. Shaista is a former International aid worker and has spent fifteen years working across the Middle East, East and West Africa and has worked extensively across Pakistan. She is the founder of the anti-racism anti Islamophobia digital platform, The Everyday Bigotry Project working to disrupt narratives around racism and bigotry.
Neha Shah
Neha is a freelance journalist and campaigner. She currently studies English Literature at the University of Oxford, where she is chair of the Student Union’s Campaign for Racial Awareness and Equality and has established a scholarship for refugees, as well as working on projects to decolonise the curriculum and oppose PREVENT legislation. Her journalistic work has been published by the Times, the New Statesman, the Independent and the Huffington Post, among other international publications. She is the ex-Editor of Panoptica magazine. She has also spent time working in refugee camps across Europe and East Africa, including as coordinator of a youth centre for unaccompanied minors in the Calais “jungle” and, more recently, as a legal caseworker and workshop facilitator in refugee camps across Greece.
Sunny Singh
Sunny is an academic, journalist and creative non-fiction writer. Her creative non-fiction and academic writing has been published by prestigious international literary journals including The Drawbridge and World Literature Today. She also writes for newspapers and magazines, in Spanish and English, across the globe. She has worked as a journalist and management executive in Mexico, Chile, and South Africa. Currently, she teaches Creative Writing at the London Metropolitan University (UK). She maintains two widely read blogs, one on her personal ruminations on politics, culture and literature, and another on the Arthashastra, the classical Sanskrit political treatise by Chanakya.
Chair: Dr Marius Turda (Director of the Centre for Medical Humanities and Reader in History, Oxford Brookes University).
Please reserve a place by Thursday 5th October by clicking on the following link.
This event is organised by the Oxford Brookes University BAME Staff Action Group.
Humanities & Identities
The Long History of Identity, Ethnicity and Nationhood
Contact email: msheriff@brookes.ac.uk
Audience: Open to all
