Challenging racial inequality and hierarchy at UCL and beyond

A new interdisciplinary centre for the research of race and the history, theory and politics of racism, will put UCL at the leading edge of the critical study of racial inequality and hierarchy.

The Sarah Parker Remond Centre was established in 2019 with prominent theorist Professor Paul Gilroy at its helm, to harness expertise and experience from across UCL in the critical study of race, as well as the history, theory and politics of racism and its effects. 

As part of the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, the centre focuses on the research of race and the history, theory and politics of racism. It was established in response to student-led demands for changes to the curriculum that acknowledge the colonial and imperial histories of UCL, London and the UK.  

“We want it to become a hub for radical scholarship and engaged thinking, drawing in scholars, activists, policy makers and students from across UCL, London and beyond,” says Professor Gilroy, the centre’s inaugural director and one of the world’s leading theorists of race and racism.  

His research has transformed thinking across disciplines, from ethnic studies, to post-colonial theory. He is a founding figure of a remapped global history that embeds the movement of racialised subjects and traded goods into accounts of the world as we know it.  

We want it to become a hub for radical scholarship and engaged thinking.” 

"We want to build a cadre of doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows, and establish a new MA programme, to empower students to explore processes of racialisation, racialised experience and racism in global, trans-historical and interdisciplinary ways,” explains Professor Gilroy. 

As well as coordinating and facilitating existing initiatives, academics within the centre will create new, historically-informed, critical knowledge that addresses some of the most urgent social and political questions of our time.  

The centre is named in honour of Sarah Parker Remond, an African-American radical, anti-slavery activist, women’s rights activist and physician, who moved to England in 1859. 

“I am excited to be leading this new centre, where we will explore and challenge the impacts of racism – scientific, metaphysical and cultural – on the development of all kinds of academic inquiry,” Professor Gilroy enthuses.