This interdisciplinary symposium will explore Cedric Robinson’s concept of the ‘racial regime’ as a theoretical framework for analysing race in the contemporary world. Researchers at all career stages will gather for a series of discursive, interdisciplinary panels with the aim of elaborating the potential of Robinson’s work for future race-critical interventions in scholarship and activism.

Cedric Robinson, who died in 2016, worked across an extraordinary range of disciplinary fields in his study of the Black radical tradition as a historical phenomenon and a resource for developing the theory and practice of liberation. He is now best known for his critiques of Marxist theory and wide-ranging analyses of the operation of racial capitalism. This symposium proposes that, in spite both of its late position in Robinson’s work and its relatively under-theorised status, the concept of a ‘racial regime’ contains theoretical and methodological insights that could prove transformative across the disciplines of race critical studies. With the exception of Joshua Myers’ elaboration of ‘racial regimes’ in relation to Black Studies (2022), and the use of ‘racial regimes’ in studies of political economy (Camp 2009), aesthetics (Lloyd 2018), and the law (Bhandar 2018), sustained theoretical attention was not given to Robinson’s framing of every such regime as ‘an alchemy of the intentional and the unintended, of known and unimagined fractures of cultural forms, of relations of power and the power of social and cultural relations’ until Alana Lentin’s The New Racial Regime (2025). Lentin’s focus on the ‘recalibrations’ of race that both enable it to adapt successfully to changing configurations of power and expose its foundational weakness will be a central theme of our discussions.

In summary, the symposium will enable race-critical scholars from across the humanities and social sciences to reflect on:

· the significance of Robinson’s concept for their fields, and

· how their own theoretical and methodological positioning can contribute to the project of deeper and finer elaboration of Robinson’s insights.

Contributors will include:

Paul Bagguley
Alex Charnley
Munotida Chinyanga
Yasmin Hussain
Malcolm James
Alana Lentin
Ali Meghji
Shifana Niyas
Mai Omer
HLT Quan
Penny Rabiger
Fatima Rajina
Naaz Rashid
Victoria Redclift
Sudip Sen
Tom Six

Programme

Thursday 3 July

10.30-11 - Arrival & Registration

11-12.30 - Welcome (Alana Lentin & Tom Six)

Alana Lentin - Resisting the Racial Regime

12.30-1.30 - Lunch

1.30-3 - Racial Regimes in Media

Munotida Chinyanga - Crash Out: Refusal as Record, Atmosphere

as Evidence

Mai Omer - Political Hallucinations: Colonial neural networks and

the Zionist latent space

Malcolm James - Fatalism

3-3.30 - Break

3.30-4.30 - Racial Regimes in Education

Penny Rabiger - Against Completion Culture: Permanent anti-

racism in resistance to permanent racism in schools

Paul Bagguley & Yasmin Hussain - The University as a Racial

Regime

4.30-5 - Interlude

Sudip Sen - Off White

5-6 - Keynote

H.L.T Quan - ‘The Robinsonian Method’: A Modest Intervention

(this keynote will be held online as well: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/96867500116?pwd=FoxwZhoClAbtfBkvQbuTuKoGW60iir.1)

Friday 4 July

10.30-11.30 - Theoretical Dimensions of Racial Regimes

Alex Charnley - Race and the Long Durée in Western Thought: A

comparative analysis of Theodor Adorno’s historical-philosophical

critique of ‘identity’ and Cedric Robinson’s racial regimes

Tom Six - ‘Contrivances, Designed and Delegated’: On the

theatricality of racial regimes

11.30-12 - Break

12-1 - Keynote

Ali Meghji - Following the Global Colorline, Following Theory

1-2 pm - Lunch (catered)

2-3 - Keynote

Joshua Myers - The Racial Regime and Cedric J. Robinson’s

Magnum Opus (this keynote will be held online as well: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/98978067511?pwd=zkuSnumU8OyJipAzEMTEvYF5RaY5W4.1)

3-3.30 - Break

3.30-4.30 - Social Relations in Racial Regimes

Shifana Niyas - Theoretical and methodological possibilities of

Cedric Robinson’s racial regime

Naaz Rashid & Victoria Redclift - Situated Citizenship: From

Brick Lane to Little Bangladesh

4.30-5.30 - Final Discussion: Building a Racial Regimes Research

Network

‘An Alchemy of the Intentional and the Unintended’