Mapping Black Europe
Open on-line lecture by Dr. Natasha A. Kelly, Prof. Olive Vassell and Elizabeth L. Hunter.
Across Europe Black communities have seldom been honoured for their contributions to social and cultural life, which have shaped each country respectively. The number of sites of public memory, e.g. monuments or statues, street names or city plaques, are limited. These urban inscriptions are performative devices that play a crucial part in social action and have the effect of social change.
On the basis of their forthcoming book (expected June 2021), BEAN-founders Vassell and Kelly alongside the Danish contributor Le Hunter will present their findings from London, Berlin and Copenhagen and discuss the nature of public memory in each city, how these political actions of memorializing take place, and how community activism is involved. The goal is to facilitate conversation between academia, activists, artists and the wider public on issues of history and memory and to foster dialogue and critical understanding of the contributions of Black people to European experiences.
Biographs
Natasha A. Kelly was born in the UK and raised in Germany. Her works are situated at the intersection of the arts, academia and activism. Focusing on the historicity of Black Germany, Natasha’s transdisciplinary research resulted in diverse publications, films, theatre plays and visual art installations. In 2010 she co-founded BEAN, the Black European Academic Network with Prof. Olive Vassell. BEAN’s first major project includes the forthcoming publication: “Mapping Black Europe: Monuments, Markers, Memories” which is expected in June 2021.
Olive Vassell was born and raised in London. Her research interests include Black Europe and the Black British media. A journalist for more than two decades, Olive has worked both in the UK and the US. In 2009, she founded euromight.com, the first Black pan-European news site. Most recently she authored a chapter on the Black British and Irish Press for the upcoming Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press, 1641-2017. Olive is an associate professor at the University of the District of Columbia where she heads its Digital Media programme.
Elizabeth Le Hunter specializes in articulations of racism in the Western European ‘raceless’ context, specifically Denmark. She examines discursive and material conditions for national belonging across race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and spatiality in the contemporary metropolis. Elizabeth is a doctoral student in African American Studies at UC Berkeley, California, with a designated emphasis on Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. She earned her MA in Cross-Cultural Studies from the University of Copenhagen.