RESEARCH PROJECTS

Grassroots Struggles, Global Visions: British Black Power, 1964-1985

This multi-year Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project explores the historical development and significance of Black Power in Britain. It is led by Dr Kerry Pimblott (University of Manchester) and Professor Kennetta Hammond Perry (Northwestern University) and the research team includes Dr Saskia Papadakis (Royal Holloway, University of London) and Zosia Alarr (Northwestern University).

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While accounts of British Black Power tend to adopt a metropolitan focus, this project shifts the lens beyond London to under-examined sites of struggle in the North West and East Midlands. Specifically, the project examines how consideration of historical place and region informed the distinct character and formation of local Black Power struggles as well as the networks that connected them to each other and their counterparts in the nation’s capital and around the globe.

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In telling these stories, the project adopts a community-engaged methodology that builds upon the strengths and resources already present within communities engaging people with lived experience as important knowledge-bearers and partners in the research process. We are currently working with several community-based heritage initiatives to better document, preserve, and (re)present these histories through memory workshops, conducting oral histories, and creating new manuscript and photographic collections.