About the Centre

Our centre seeks to foster the broad range of research currently being done in the Faculty of Arts around the artistic and intellectual work of people of African descent. We aim to create an international hub for Black Humanities research in the heart of Bristol. Current interdisciplinary projects include work on Black Health and the Humanities, Black British Art, African small magazines, and UK Hip-Hop, ethics and social justice, slavery and its legacies, and race and genetics in contemporary fiction. We are committed to reaching audiences outside the traditional university through a diverse programme of film screenings, reading groups, performances and research collaborations with local communities. Such activities enable our research to generate impact in other areas including the cultural industries and higher education policy.

 

Image: Lubaina Himid Venetian Maps: Ceramicists, Acrylic on Canvas, 1997.  Photo: Rochadale Arts & Heritage Service.

The Centre for Black Humanities is home to a diverse collective of researchers who come together regularly to think and learn together. You can find more information around who we are and what we’re up to on these pages.

‘Saluting our Sisters’: Reflections by Siza Dube and Lizzie Bowes

  Siza Dube: To commemorate this year’s Black History Month theme, ‘Saluting our Sisters’, my colleague Lizze Bowes and I took the opportunity to bring together Black women in and outside of the academy to facilitate a rich discussion about honouring our Black...

Professor Nicole Aljoe at The Centre for Black Humanities

Despite the on-going COVID pandemic, my sojourn at the Centre for Black Humanities in Bristol during the fall term of 2021 was an incredibly productive and intellectually engaging experience.  I conducted research in the Bristol archives on two related projects. The...

The Centre for Black Humanities: Who we are and future directions by Dr Saima Nasar and Professor Madhu Krishnan

The Centre for Black Humanities is an international hub for Black Humanities research in the heart of Bristol. The Centre aims to foster the broad range of research currently being done at the University of Bristol around the artistic and intellectual work of people...

Remembering Enslavement on August 23rd by Dr Jessica Moody

August 23rd has been designated by UNESCO as the ‘International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.’ [1]. This specific day was chosen because of its connection to the Haitian Revolution, the largest and most successful uprising of enslaved...

Bass Culture and the Black Humanities: An Introduction by Ivan Mouraviev

In a reggae dance hall session, the vibrations of bass are not only heard but felt. The speakers tingle your skin, clothes, and bones. Bass is everywhere, its low-frequency waves flowing through and around the crowd. Some dancers swim with the rhythms, some let the...

Lourenço da Silva Mendonça and the Black Atlantic Abolitionist Movement in the 17th Century by Dr José Lingna Nafafé

In the Anglophone historiography, debate on enslaved people’s experience and the abolition of Atlantic World slavery has been largely dominated by US historians whose work is often geographically focused on the US, the Caribbean and Anglophone Africa and...

The Poetics and Politics of Rap Music in the UK by Dr Justin Williams

The past decade in the UK has been rife with political discourse in all its forms: the spectre of Brexit has dominated over half this time, and now a post-Brexit landscape needs to deal with issues around the Irish Border, the increasing call for Scottish...

Race and Antiracism in Science and the Humanities by Dr Josie Gill

The following is an excerpt from a conversation between Josie Gill and Michell Chresfield published in the LA Review of Books in August 2021. For the full conversation please click here. How, as humanities scholars, can we approach race and science today, at a moment...

Selected Publications

 

Selected Publications

Selected Publications

Selected Publications

Selected Publications

 

Selected Publications

Selected Publications

Selected Publications

Selected Publications

Selected Publications

Selected Publications

Selected Publications