UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre Podcast

A conversation about Rahul Rao’s book, ‘The Psychic Lives of Statues’. The conversation considers the agitation caused by attempts to remove celebratory statues of figures involved in the violence of the Atlantic Slave trade or of colonialism. Are statues made into ‘idols’ by people who want to defend these histories? How should we understand the sudden ‘coming alive’ of these previously forgotten and unnoticed representations of the human form? What can we learn from the distinctive erection of statues by corporate or state projects in our time and should we view these recent attempts to mark and control space through statues as a continuation of the spatial and representation tactics of European colonialism?The conversation was recorded in July 2025.Speakers: Gargi Bhattacharyya and Rahul Rao. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Luke de Noronha welcomes Sita Balani, Senior Lecturer in English at Queen Mary University of London and the author, most recently, of Deadly and Slick: the Sexual Life of Race in Britain (Verso Press, 2023). They discuss Sita’s recent writings on culture wars, melodrama as a mode of political communication, and the difference between the ordinary and normal. This conversation was recorded in November 2025Speakers: Luke de Noronha and Sita BalaniProducer: Trisha HartEditor: James Fox Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Radical Abundance – understanding the reconfiguration of the global economy and how we might survive itKeir Milburn and Kai Heron in conversation with Gargi Bhattacharyya. This conversation was recorded in the summer of 2025 and discusses the changing role and approach of the United States and the extreme hardships arising from climate catastrophe as triggers to re-imagine the global economy.The conversation was recorded before the publication of Kai and Keir’s excellent and celebrated book, ‘Radical Abundance’, but the themes of the conversation echo the preoccupations of the book.There was a lot to discuss here – as a result we have split the conversation into three sections for ease of listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gala Rexer talks to Edna Bonhomme, culture writer, historian of science, journalist, and author of “A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19” (2025). The conversation covers theoretical and methodological questions about the relationship between confinement and disease, Edna’s anti/inter-disciplinary approach to writing, health and illness in literature, and how the intersectional fight for prison abolition relates to struggles for health equality. This conversation was recorded in June 2025Speakers: Dr Gala Rexer, Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Warwick and Honorary Research Fellow at the SPRC // Dr Edna Bonhomme Producer: Gala Rexer and Trisha HartEditors: James Fox Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Discussion of Gargi’s research and the new module designed to open conversations about how we might understand the interplay between global politics and the global economy in this moment of rapid realignment.Speakers:Gargi Bhattacharyya, Paige Patchin, Luke de Noronha Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Discussion of Luke’s research and why thinking about movement and bordering allows us understand emerging machineries of (perhaps) racialised violence.Speakers:Luke de Noronha, Paige Patchin, Gargi Bhattacharyya Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr Clive Chijioke Nwonka is joined by Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey. Lola Young became one of the first Black Women members of the House of Lords in 2004. Raised in foster care in north London, she studied at the New College of Speech and Drama, then worked as an actress, before becoming Professor of Cultural Studies at Middlesex University. Later, she worked in arts administration before receiving an OBE in 2001 for services to Black British History, and becoming an independent crossbench member of the House of Lords. She is active in campaigns on modern slavery and ethical fashion. Her new book, Eight weeks: Looking Back, Moving Forwards, Defying the Odds (Penguin 2024) is a deeply moving memoir that tells the remarkable life story of Baroness Young from her childhood in foster care the House of Lords. Here, Clive and Lola they discuss her latest book, its themes and some of the ideas and experiences that have shaped Lola’s writing, scholarship, and public life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Clive Chijioke Nwonka is joined by George the Poet. George is a spoken word artist, poet, rapper, podcast host and author, who has gained a following of over millions through his commentary and creative work addressing systemic injustice in the UK. Here, we discuss his latest book, Track Record, a fascinating memoir in intellectual exploration of race, belonging, music and injustice. Throughout this podcast, they’ll be discussing George’s latest book, its themes, their shared experiences growing up in North West London, and some of the ideas that formed and shaped George’s writing and intellectual work.Speakers: George the Poet, spoken-word artist, poet and podcast host of Have You Heard George’s Podcast // Dr Clive Chijioke Nwonka, Associate Professor in Film, Culture and Society and Faculty Associate in the UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gala Rexer and a group of Race, Ethnicity, and Postcolonial Studies master students, Aisha Rana-Deshmukh, Gabriel Rahman, Julia Snow, and Alex Eaglestone, welcome Alexandre White, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University and author of Epidemic Orientalism (Stanford University Press, 2023). Dr. White discusses health and illness through the lens of racial and sexual boundaries in Victorian and contemporary horror and figures of the monstrous, the role of health regulations in the making of racial difference in the Middle East, and a humanistic approach to sociology and history.This conversation was recorded on 17th June 2024. Speakers: Dr Gala Rexer, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Warwick // Dr Alexandre White, Johns Hopkins University // students of the MA in REPS cohort: Aisha Rana-Deshmukh, Gabriel Rahman, Julia Snow, and Alex EaglestoneProducer: Dr Gala Rexer and Kaissa KarhuEditors:  Kaissa Karhu  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gala Rexer welcomes Akwugo Emejulu, Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick and author of Fugitive Feminism (Silver Press, 2022). Discussing the figure of the fugitive from a Black feminist perspective, Akwugo addresses questions about solidarity and coalitional work, strategies of counter-storytelling and playing with new forms of writing, and discusses the difficulties of staying in the liminal space of fugitivity as a mode of experimentation, ambivalence, and disidentification from the figure of the Human. This conversation was recorded on 6th July 2023. Speakers: Dr Gala Rexer, Lecturer at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre // Professor Akwugo Emejulu, University of WarwickProducer: Dr Gala Rexer and Trisha HartEditors:  Kaissa Karhu  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gala Rexer welcomes Maya Mikdashi, Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Lecturer in the Middle East Studies Program at Rutgers University, to talk about her book Sextarianism: Sovereignty, Secularism and the State in Lebanon (Stanford, 2022). Maya reflects on the multi-disciplinary genealogy of her book, and describes what it means to take different fields (anthropology, gender studies, and Middle East studies) seriously. This conversation also engages with the relationship between geopolitics, epistemology, and methodology, and with the making and unmaking of categories when we ask the same question from different locations. Maya also talks about doing ethnography and archival work, and our own investment in meaning and the desire to fix truth as scholars.   This conversation was recorded on 27th January 2023. Speakers: Dr Gala Rexer, postdoctoral fellow at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre // Maya Mikdashi, Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University.   Producer: Lucy Stagg and Dr Gala Rexer Editors: Kaissa Karhu  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gala Rexer welcomes Françoise Vergès, franco-Reunionnese activist, independent curator, and public educator, to talk about her most recent books, A Feminist Theory of Violence (2022), The Wombs of Women. Race, Capital, Feminism (2020,) and A Decolonial Feminism (2019). Françoise discusses how women’s rights have been deployed in the service of the carceral state, and how a decolonial feminism needs to reimagine a collective politics of protection against violence, pollution, and exhaustion outside of the nation-state form and capital. Françoise calls upon us to strike, unionize, and fight back, to rethink the family, reproduction, and care outside of racialized frameworks of security and deservingness, and to nourish comrade- and friendship, revolutionary love, and inter-generational transmission of feminist thought. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Coretta Phillips, Professor of Criminology and Social Policy, joins Clive Nwonka for a conversation on race, criminal justice and social policy. Coretta discusses ethnographically capturing both the organic experiences of multi-culture and the more structured and governed forms of multiculturalism taking place within the prison system, her recent work on criminal justice experiences of Gypsy and Traveller communities in England since 1960, and the complacency and the complicity in racist practices in higher education. Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/transcript-conversation-coretta-phillips This conversation was recorded on 20th May 2022Speakers: Clive Nwonka, Lecturer in Film, Culture and Society at UCL’s Institute of Advanced Studies  // Coretta Phillips, Professor of Criminology and Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political ScienceProducer: Kaissa KarhuEditors: Amie Liebowitz and Kaissa Karhu www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/podcasts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.