New exhibition spotlights UCL’s ongoing work to address its eugenics legacy

“Prejudice in Power: Contesting the Pseudoscience of Superiority” showcases responses from a wide range of people, including those marginalised by eugenic thinking, to UCL’s historical ties with eugenics. The exhibition, which is also extended in a digital showcase, explores how eugenics shaped society, marginalised voices and created structural inequalities which still impact us today.

Eugenics, a term coined by the influential Victorian scientist Francis Galton, is a discriminatory pseudoscience which categorises some people as superior and others as inferior. Eugenicists like Galton advocated for imposed controls on reproductive behaviour in humans for the supposed betterment of the population.

Galton gifted UCL his personal research collection and archive, and left money to UCL in his will to establish the country’s first Professorial Chair in Eugenics, which the university did. Eugenic thinking is present today in racism, ableism, homophobia and reproductive controls.

Subhadra Das, Curator, UCL Science Collections 2012-21, excerpt from footage on display in “Prejudice in Power”:

"So many of the conversations that we have in our society today about people and how their identities are marginalised, or how they are marginalised by dint of their identity, feeds back into these early 20th century ways of looking at the world.” 

The “Prejudice in Power” exhibition runs from 27 February to 12 December 2025. Drawing on items from UCL’s collections, including archives and rare books, the exhibition explores UCL’s links to eugenics alongside a parallel but untold story of resistance and dissent.

It showcases the outputs of five co-produced cultural activism projects, each tackling UCL’s eugenics legacy through a different lens, from exploring the impact of eugenics on transgender lives, to exploring the relationship between eugenics and the algorithms used by TikTok and Instagram. Later this year, the online showcase will incorporate work by spoken and written word artists commissioned to respond to UCL’s eugenics legacy as part of “Words Matter”, an innovative public art programme. These works will include film, poetry, music and performance art.

All of these projects bring together a range of voices from within and outside of UCL and from communities marginalised by eugenic ideas to provide a platform for those impacted and excluded by eugenics to share their lived experiences. It is hoped that this programme of activities contributes to reparative healing and societal change.

"We were dealing with this racist, transphobic legacy of eugenics at UCL, that we saw in the archive, but what we actually wanted was to make a safe space, and in that be able to make something fun out of this legacy. To create an output that would be engaging, educational, interesting, fun, colourful; something that brings the community together.”

— Aleks Jagielski, Facilitator of co-creation project “Transgender Lives and Eugenics in the Museum Space”, excerpt from footage on display in “Prejudice in Power”.

The Prejudice in Power programme was initiated in response to recommendations from a 2018 inquiry into UCL’s eugenics legacy commissioned by UCL’s former President & Provost Michael Arthur. The inquiry was led by Professor Iyiola Solanke of the University of Leeds, and a recommendations report was published in 2020. Prejudice in Power is led by UCL's Museums & Cultural Programmes and Special Collections (part of Library, Culture, Collections and Open Science) in collaboration with a working group of teams from across UCL and an Advisory Board. The Words Matter public art programme is being led by the UCL Cultural and Community Engagement team.

See the exhibition

See "Prejudice in Power: Contesting the Pseudoscience of Superiority" in the Student Centre from 27 February to 12 December 2025.

View the digital showcase, which expands on the materials on display in the Student Centre exhibition.

More about Prejudice in Power

• Visit the Prejudice in Power website to find out more about the programme.
• Visit the Public Art website and Instagram to find out more about Public Art at UCL.