Mon, 30 Oct 2023 19:00 - 20:00 GMT

History Matters will be presenting a series of talks and in-conversation events chaired by Professor Hakim Adi to support the legal campaign against Chichester University. Adi’s postgraduate students will deliver these fundraising events. We will be inviting past and current students on the MRes in the History of Africa and the African Diaspora, as well as PhD students under Professor Adi’s supervision to present a historical talk based on the topic of their dissertation or thesis. The MRes is the only Master-level programme in the UK that focuses on the interconnected histories between Africa and its Diaspora from an African-centred perspective. The monthly events will last approximately one hour, including an audience Q&A.

The first event on PanAfrikanism and Reparations will be presented by Esther Stanford Xosei, a leading reparations scholar-activist. Esther was the first PhD student of Professor Adi when he began his professorship at Chichester University in 2012. Her thesis is entitled, Maatubuntuman in Ubuntudunia: Our Sankofa Planet Repairs Goal in the UK for Reparations and the Decolonial Re-Making of the World from Below.

In this audio-visual presentation, Esther will explore the Pan-Afrikan history of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations. Indeed, the centuries long fight to effect and secure holistic reparations has been connected to the global Pan-Afrikan struggles of Afrikan people on the continent and in the Diaspora to re-envision and reconstruct a world-order which is not based upon colonial dispossession, racial hierarchies and ecological exploitation, but upon relationships of solidarity, cooperation, and mutual support; both among people and between people and the Earth.

Key questions that will be explored include:

• What is the Pan-Afrikan meaning of reparations

• Why Pan-Afrikanist approaches to reparations organizing are being erased and marginalized in contemporary public discourses and media reports.

• How CARICOM states are implicated in the decentering of Afrika through the ‘Caribbeanisation’ of what is essentially a 'Global Afrikan' reparations claim.

• Why contemporary Afrikan Liberation struggles against Euro-American imperialism in the Sahel and Haiti hold the key to securing the world-remaking goals of Pan-Afrikan reparations.

• How historians can support counterhegemonic reparations movements from below and contribute to informing local and global dialogues about reparations and how to realize them.