Dissent! Week 4

Weekly online discussions inspired by the history of Radicalism

What is dissent? Which stories get told? Who is remembered and who is forgotten? From the historical home of dissenters and abolitionists, this series of talks aims to uncover histories of radicalism from the bottom up, finding inspiration from the past and hope in the present.

Each week speakers will share their thoughts, research and experience on the following topics before a group discussion will take place. The first four weeks of this programme will focus on the following topics:

Week 1 (June 2nd)
Anti-Colonial Dissent: Reckoning with the past – Slave Revolts and Abolition

Speaker: Gurminder K Bhambra speaking on the Haitian Revolution

Speaker: Ali Meghji on Du Bois: past and present

Week 2 (June 16th)
Defining Violence’ – What is deemed ‘violence’? Who gets to be violent and who gets to resist?

Speaker: Akanksha Mehta

Speaker: Ruba Salih

Week 3 (June 30th)
Dissenting academies and Radical Education

Speaker: Kehinde Andrews on Black radicalism and the supplementary school movement

Speaker: Ken Worpole

Ken Worpole is a writer and social historian who between 1969 and 1973 worked as an English teacher at Hackney Downs School. This was a time when teachers began challenging the curriculum for failing to recognise that Britain was already by then a multi-cultural society. Ken went on to work with the radical Hackney bookshop Centerprise to encourage and publish work by young black and working class students that could be used to enlarge the range and subject matter of literature and history that could be used in the classroom.

Week 4 (July 14th)
Radical coalitions – thinking across lines of division

Speaker: Annie Olaloku-Teriba on Black radical coalitions