Black Studies TCD Online Seminar Series

'...the study and celebration of the Black particularity functions as one path in the search for a universal understanding of the human condition. It is a legitimate arena for seeking knowledge about humanity. This celebrates diversity and universality, and searches for ways that the Black experience, like all peoples' experience, can be a gateway for grasping the universals that define all levels of human attainment' (Alkalimat, 2021: 5)

To celebrate BLACK HISTORY MONTH, Black Studies at Trinity College Dublin will host a series of online evening seminars featuring international guest speakers.

DATE: Monday 6th October - Thursday 9th October

TIME: 6/6.30 pm - 7/7.30 pm each evening

The Black Studies Trinity elective aims to examine the origins, relevance and scope of Black Studies, especially its relevance for students who will come to it in an interdisciplinary manner.

You can learn more about the Black Studies Trinity Elective HERE

This seminar series is an opportunity for students not yet enrolled in the elective to experience the topics explored in the field of Black Studies. This series is open to students of all levels who have an interest in uncovering the rich history, voices, and movements of Africa and its diaspora.

SPEAKERS:

Monday 6th October 6 pm: 'Surinamese in the Netherlands: Centering the Black Surinamese Diaspora'

Ashley Melcherts, PhD Candidate in Sociology, Mississippi State University.

Ashley Melcherts is a Black Surinamese Dutch woman, athlete, sociologist, and currently a PhD Candidate at Mississippi State University. Ashley is mostly concerned with how social inequalities at the intersections of race, ethnicity, and gender influence people’s sense of self to better understand how they navigate and resist systems of oppression. In her current dissertation research, she puts identity formation in the larger context of processes such as racism and colorism, by centering the lived experiences of Black Surinamese Dutch people.

Tuesday 7th October 6.30 pm: 'Tracing Black Women’s Experiences under Italian Fascism'

Mathilde Lyons, PhD student in Italian and History, University of St Andrews.

Mathilde Lyons is a PhD student in Italian and History at the University of St Andrews. Her research focuses on the experiences of Black people, mainly from Italy’s East African colonies, who lived in Italy during the Fascist period (1922-1945). Her doctoral research has led to the compilation of a corpus of approximately 6000 Black individuals who spent time in Italy during this period, the vast majority of whom were men. Within this overwhelmingly male archive, women’s stories appear more fleetingly, yet they offer insights into how race and gender intersected in Fascist Italy. By centring women’s experiences, this paper highlights forms of everyday life practices and acts of resistance that often differed from men’s experiences and which illuminate how Black life was lived and felt beyond individual’s interaction with the state.

Wednesday 8th October 6.30 pm: 'An Exploration of "Afropean" Identity Through Black and Multiracial Contemporary Visual Artists'

H eather Nickels, Doctoral Candidate in Art History & Archaeology, Columbia University in the City of New York.

H eather Nickels is an independent curator, researcher, writer and doctoral candidate in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. Nickels received her BA from Barnard College of Columbia University in the City of New York in 2016, her MA from The Courtauld Institute of Art in London in 2019, and her MA and MPhil from Columbia University in 2023 and 2025 respectively. Her central interests include: African American art and artists living and working in the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries; Black women artists' global histories; Afro-European/Afropean Studies; and early modern representations of race in the Americas and Europe. She has worked as a full-time curator on exhibitions on modern photography, painting, prints and sculpture from the Americas; reinstalled several iterations of African/Diaspora collections galleries; commissioned murals from contemporary artists from the American South; and proposed and acquired more than two dozen art pieces for museums.

Thursday 9th October 6.30 pm: 'Maroons, Marronage, and Black Liberation in Brazil and the Américas'

marina dadico, PhD Candidate in Latin American & Latine Studies & AAUW International Fellow, University of California, Santa Cruz.

marina [ela/ella/she] is a cuir scholar interested in Black geographies, urban anthropology, território, marronage, and land struggles across the Américas. She received her B.A. in Psychology from Universidade Federal de Ciências da Saúde de Porto Alegre (Brazil), and is now pursuing a PhD in Latin American & Latine Studies, with a designated emphasis in Anthropology and Critical Race & Ethnic Studies, at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her current research approaches quilombola women mobilizing their communities toward territorial rights in Porto Alegre, Brazil’s southernmost metropolis. They do this not only by navigating land tenure law and state violence in a highly white-coded city, but also by creating spaces to practice freedom. marina’s work has been supported by various funding agencies, including the Conference on Latin American History’s Scobie Award, the Brazilian Studies Association’s Brazil Initiation Scholarship, the Wenner-Gren Foundation’s Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, and the American Association of University Women’s International Doctoral Fellowship.