I am often asked to share some of my lectures and talks and I am never sure exactly which one will be helpful in the particular context. So I have decided to collect some of them together here. Of course a lot of them are on ‘decolonisation’ – an exceedingly broad topic indeed. But there are other topics here – such as African history and study skills. You can also check out my Youtube channel – which is slightly more up to date that this list. I will endeavour to keep this collection updated as well. As usual, the talks are collated thematically.
Decolonisation of Higher Education
In the following talks, I focus on what decolonisation means within the context of higher education.
The video is from a panel discussion I was involved in, which held on Thursday the 12th of December, 2019. The panel was titled, Preparing critical students for the post-truth era: Key Research Questions, and was part of the 2019 SRHE [The Society for Research into Higher Education] Annual Research Conference.
On the 13th of September 2019, I convened a conference at the University of Bristol titled, ‘Decolonising the Law School.’ (The conference was sponsored by the Society of Legal Scholars as well as the Law School at the University of Bristol.). This is the welcome address.
‘Rhodes must fall’ or ‘Rhodes must read Fanon?’ was the title of a talk on decolonisation I gave to MORAY HOUSE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND SPORT in January of 2021. The title was inspired by this tweet:
I’ll never forgive Higher education for colonising Rhodes must fall and basically turning it into Rhodes must read more Toni Morrison.
That’s what you effectively say when you think decolonisation has anything to do with curriculums and not the destruction of white hegemony.
— deej (@fanoniscanon) November 2, 2020
The Contribution of Universities to Racial Justice was a seminar hosted on the 1st of July 2020 by the SRHE. My presentation was titled, ‘Decolonising the Neoliberal University: Or the problem racial capitalism.’ My section begins at about 7 mins 3 seconds into the video.
This was a presentation I gave at the Annual Conference of the Society of Legal Scholars, held between the 1st and 4th of September 2020. In it I discuss the limits of diversity and why I think decolonial thought is vital to the functions of legal education. I later developed the thoughts here into an article and also a blog post.
As part of an SWDTP Decolonising Social Research Seminar Series that ran from November 2020 to January 2021, I participated in a seminar on decolonising theory with Arathi Sriprakash and Mark Jackson.
In this podcast I am in conversation with Myriam Francios. We discuss how to address the nexus of Whiteness and coloniality within higher education and ultimately beyond.
Here, Nomfundo Ramalekana and I discuss what it means to talk about decolonisation and human rights. Do human rights frameworks help or hinder?
On Decolonisation, Race and Africa
Taking the position that decolonisation is ultimately a political project to dismantle the structures of domination encapsulated in within colonial logics and praxes, the following videos are concerned with Africa’s place in the epistemic landscape, in questions of education, memory, environmental justice, among other things.
In this video, recorded for a colleague, I discuss the basics of how colonisation was operationalised in Africa.
On the 8th of June 2019, we held the 2nd annual conference of Forever Africa Conference and Events [FACE 2019] at the University of Bristol. The video above opens with a land acknowledgement and also introduces the concept of the Multiversity.
‘Re-engaging Pan Africanism’ held at Birmingham City University, UK from December 6-8th, 2018. On the 8th, I gave a focusing on the connection between redefining the ontology of land and building Pan-African solidarities. In essence, decolonisation is a political project in which the epistemologies of law are also complicit in resisting. [The video has to be watched in YouTube.]
In this video, I am in conversation with a very old friend [he is not old, but our friendship is!]. We discuss how the conversations about aid to Africa begin with problematic premises and therefore take us nowhere.
This is a spoken word poem titled ‘African Child’ that I wrote in 2009. This is a video from an African Festival in 2010, when I delivered it for the first time.
In 2017, a student of mine embarked on a project to uncover fictional and non-fictional African heroes. The video is my contribution to her laudable project. I talk about Ȩfúnşetán Aníwúrà, Moremi Ajasoro, and Amina of Zaria.
On the 8th of May 2020, as part of Afrikan Liberation Awareness Month, I was involved in a Panel discussion titled, ‘The Global Black Experience of Ecocide.’ The panel featured a poem read by Kabbo Hue Ferdinand, it was hosted by Chay Harwood from XR Bristol and the discussion included Esther Stanford-Xosei (XR International Solidarity), Green Party Councillor Cleo Lake, teacher & community organiser Sauda Kyalambuka and myself.
On the Student Experience
The following videos are student-centred, where I address myself to the student experience.
In 2018, I was interviewed by Cameron Scheijde, co-Editor-in-Chief of Epigram [University of Bristol Student Paper]. The focus of our conversation was Black History Month and how this should proceed within a university.
In 2016, as part of a campaign called Trust Your Struggle, I was interviewed by the Student Union of Bristol University, to discuss how students can survive the ‘struggle’ of studying law. Among other things, I speak about studying law at Obafemi Awolowo University after being inspired by the TV program L.A. Law.
