[Black Europe] at UCL: Phase Two

A UCL-based reading group unlocking understanding across the institution of how legacies of colonialism and racism has formed, but largely unacknowledged by the study of Europe.

Building on the success of the [Black Europe] workstream, developed over two previous academic years by colleagues in UCL SELCS, UCL Anthropology and UCL European Institute, this project aimed to interrogate how we think about 'Europe' and its intersections with colonial frameworks and racialised categories such as whiteness. Now focusing more on research methodologies, and curated by the three academic leads, this UCL-based reading group met four times and featured academics like:

• Dr Beatrix Gassmann de Sousa: Aff ective Debt in Film, 26 February 2025
• Prof Phiroze Vasunia: Andromeda and Representations of Myth, 26 March 2025
• Dr Toyin Agbetu: Decolonisation and DEI Are Dead: Long Live Deracialisation, 5 March 2025
• Dr Chloe Ireton: Black Lives and Thought in Early Modern Europe, 7 May 2025

For each session, a bibliographical resource corner was created, now redesigned for the online repository, hosted by the UCL European Institute. 

Three public lectures were organised with guest speakers:

• Jean Beaman: Suspect Citizenship: Rethinking Belonging and Non-belonging in Plural Societies, 20 May 2025
• Keon West: The Science of Racism, 21 January 2025
• Diamond Ashiagbor: EU integration and European colonialism, 10 December 2024

The initiative aimed to review existing research, discuss research methodologies and reconsider institutional practices across UCL. The research-informed reading group enhanced understanding of how legacies of colonialism and racism have informed the study of Europe as a region and political entity, and how different academic disciplines have responded. The project team have collaborated with a publisher to launch a book by Keon West. In future, the team would organise an international workshop in 2026 to test and expand ideas on racialised structures that shape the production of knowledge about Europe and Black people in European contexts. 

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