Daughters and Sons of the Post-Windrush Generation: Reflections and New Directions

Overview

In this panel, we will hear from women and men whose parents and/or grandparents are members of the Windrush Generation, and to learn how they have been inspired by the academic work of the Post-Windrush generation, as well as the lived experiences of their families and communities, and how this has informed their own commitment to academic scholarship.

This event has been organised by Isabelle Higgins and Dr Kenny Monrose.

Panellists

The panellists will include Dr Sharon Walker (Education), Maya McFarlane (HSPS), Wayne Weaver (Music) and Malik Al Nasir (History). The structure will be 15 minutes for each panellist to talk about their research in the context of the themes of the event, and then there will be a half hour for discussion between the panellists and questions from the audience.

The event will be introduced by Aisling Gilgeours (Sociology), and chaired by Annoa Abekah-Mensah (HSPS).

	Dr Sharon Walker is a sociologist of education with particular interest in how education systems are shaped by racial thinking, processes of racialisation and racism.  Dr Walker's current research looks at the racialised discourse of the UK’s widening participation policy agenda, and she has also published in the field of comparative and international education on the erasure of racism as a sector concern. As a former primary school teacher (Key Stage 1 and 2), Dr Walker works with school leaders to support their understanding and implementation of anti-racist education approaches.
	Maya McFarlane is a second year student at Pembroke College studying Human, Social and Political Sciences. She specialises in Sociology and is the former Women’s and Non-Binary officer for the SU BME Campaign and outgoing undergraduate Ethnic Minorities officer for Pembroke College.
	Wayne Weaver is reading for a PhD in Music at the University of Cambridge. His thesis, loosely entitled “Space, ‘Race’ and the Music in late Eighteenth-century Kingston”, focusses on the art and sound worlds of Anglo-Jamaican composer, Samuel Felsted (1743-1802). Wayne enjoys thinking about how histories of colonial-era music might be re-populated with details of the Africans (and their descendants), whose lives played out in and around the theatres, churches and other spaces where the music of the period was being heard and overheard. Wayne’s research also investigates how Jamaica’s residents used the island’s musical activity as a vehicle for expressions of racial ideologies.
	Malik Al Nasir is a Liverpool born performance poet, film maker and social researcher and activist of Guyanese heritage. Malik has written articles and conducted social research projects for The Guardian Newspaper and London School of Economics (Reading The Riots with Professor Tim Newburn), Liverpool’s Criminal Justice Agency’s (Social impact of The Race Relations Amendment Act) and developed a social policy think tank (S.E.R.I – Social Enterprise Research Initiative) which he piloted with The University of Liverpool’s “Globalisation & Social Exclusion Unit” (Professor Ronaldo Munk) and Liverpool City Council. Malik has been granted a fellowship at Tufts University (2021) in Boston, based upon his research into his unique 18th and 19th century private archive from the owners of The Sandbach Tinne Company, (from whom Malik is directly descended), who monopolised the slave and sugar trade in British Guiana. Malik matriculated in 2020 at St Catherine’s College Cambridge, where he is reading for a PhD in history.
	Annoa Abekah-Mensah is an undergraduate student at Wolfson College studying Human, Social and Political Sciences and the current WCSA BAME Representative. Born and raised in South-East London and of Ghanaian heritage, her particular areas of academic interest include postcolonial, Pan-African and Marxist international relations theory and the intersectionality of race and class. This interest, as well as her involvement in Wolfson College’s ‘Let’s Talk About Race and Racism’ Working Group, led her, with other students, to produce the podcast Shade in Cambridge. She has previously studied at UCL, worked in education and interned in Capital Markets.
	Aisling Gilgeours is a postgraduate student at Lucy Cavendish College, studying Sociology (Marginality & Exclusion Pathway). Prior to Cambridge, Aisling studied Criminology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham, where her academic and voluntary endeavours centred around police and penal reform.  She has worked across various local authority settings, ranging from homelessness to economic development. Academically, she is particularly interested in the class experiences and identities of racialised communities and how racial and class boundaries are (re)produced or resisted.

This event is a precursor to a larger conference from 6-7 May 2022 titled: "The Post-Windrush Generation: Black British Voices of Resistance". Find out more via the CRASSH website.

Supported by: