OXFORD AND EMPIRE: A WORKSHOP WITH CATHERINE HALL, 29 NOVEMBER 2019
Professor Catherine Hall’s pathbreaking work in the field of imperial history, including most recently her contributions to the Legacies of British Slave Ownership project, have fundamentally altered the conditions and possibilities for studying Britain’s involvement with slavery and empire. Throughout her career, Professor Hall has offered significant resources to scholars interested in understanding the cultural, political and economic frameworks that interconnect the history of Britain and that of its empire. The Legacies of British Slave Ownership project comes at a particularly crucial historical moment, providing both powerful tools as well as much-needed intellectual impetus to the movement to decolonise universities as well as academic disciplines.
Given Oxford’s vital historical role in the expansion and governing of empire and in the transformation of wealth and influence generated from slave plantations, colonial trade and imperial administrations into cultural, intellectual, and political capital in Britain, this seems a good place in which to reconsider our own scholarship in the light of new perspectives and the changing parameters of historical knowledge.
We invite applications from postgraduates and early career scholars at Oxford working on colonialism, slavery, and empire in any discipline to participate in a Workshop with Professor Hall on 29 November 2019, to be held at St John’s College, Oxford. Applicants should submit a brief bio and a short statement of about 250 words on how they might go about locating their own research within the context of Oxford’s involvement with slavery and colonialism and the efforts to decolonise the university. If you would like to participate in the Workshop without presenting a paper, please submit instead a statement of about 250 words on how attendance at the workshop would contribute to the development of your own research. Places are limited, and applicants are requested to write as soon as possible.
The Workshop will consist of two panels of three to four short presentations of 10-12 minutes each, with Professor Hall opening the Q&A. This will be followed by a round table discussion with Professor Hall on changing historiographies of colonialism and slavery, with a focus on reconstructing sources and reassessing methodologies in the light of new knowledge.
Please submit proposals to Dr Mishka Sinha via mishka.sinha@sjc.ox.ac.uk no later than 14 November 2019.
For enquires email: mishka.sinha@sjc.ox.ac.uk
