The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine’s (LSTM) Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Team is pleased to invite you to its Black History Month 2023 flagship event. This panel event will feature 5 leading experts, Professor Stephen Small, Dr Ama Biney, Professor Jason Arday, Dr Lioba Hirsch, and Laurence Westgaph, in conversation on the topic of ‘Understanding Colonial Legacies and Exploring Restorative Action’. This event is supported by the University of Liverpool Faculty of Health and Life Sciences.

The event will be hosted at Pembroke House, Pembroke Place, L3 5QA, on the corner of Daulby Street in Liverpool City Centre, on Thursday 5th October from 17.30 until 20.00. The building is fully accessible for wheelchair users and a hearing loop is available. Any accessibility requests can be sent to samia.benbrih@lstmed.ac.uk.

The event will take place in person with the option to attend online. The link for online attendance will be shared with those who have registered the week of the event. If you are no longer able to attend the event, please cancel your ticket on Eventbrite in advance. Please find the event running order attached below:

17.30 - 18.00 Welcome drinks and networking.
18.00 - 19.30 Panel event (including a 15-minute Q&A from 19.15 - 19.30).
19.30 - 20.00 Networking drinks, with food available (ingredient lists for food will be available on the day, however those with food allergies will be responsible for ensuring that the food available is allergy-safe).

In recognition of the level of interest in these topics and the views of our panellists, we will also live-stream the event in an ‘overspill’ room to accommodate as many people as possible who wish to attend. Room allocation will be based on a first-come, first-served basis, so be sure to register as soon as possible if you want to be in the room with the panel in person! Those in the overspill room will still have the opportunity to submit live questions to the panel during the Q&A via a QR code. Please note pre and post event networking will be available to all in-person attendees in a shared space.

Limited car parking will be available from 17.00 – 18.00 on a first-come, first-served basis. The available car park is located next door to Pembroke House, directly opposite LSTM's Mary Kingsley building and has an automatic barrier manned remotely by our Estates Team. The nearest available paid public car park is the Q-Park near the former Royal Liverpool Hospital building on Epworth St, Liverpool L6 1LY. There is also on street council car parking available within the vicinity of the venue, which should be free after 6pm but please check the council’s car parking instructions in advance.

If you start experiencing COVID-19 symptoms (as listed on the NHS website) prior to the event, please take relevant precautions and if unable to attend, please cancel your ticket in advance. Please note this event is for those aged 18+, and there will be professional photographs taken at this event so if you do not want your photo taken, please opt out on the front desk upon arrival.

You can find more information about our expert panellists attached below:

Professor Stephen Small (online attendance)

Stephen Small is a Professor of African Diaspora Studies at the University of California Berkeley where he has taught since 1995. His academic career has taken him to universities in England, the United States and the Netherlands, and he has directed programmes in Zimbabwe, Brazil, France, and Spain.

Professor Small Ph.D. earned his doctorate in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989; his MSc in Social Science from the University of Bristol, England in 1983; and his BA (hons) in Economics and Sociology from the University of Kent at Canterbury, England in 1979. He teaches courses in the comparative historical sociology of Africans throughout the diaspora, with particular focus on the United States, the Caribbean and England. He was Visiting Professor at the Amsterdam in 2010-2015 and taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst 1988-1992 and in England at the University of Warwick and the University of Leicester.

Professor Small’s current research priorities are on the political economy of Black Europe, and British imperialism, and its legacies, with special reference to Liverpool. He has mentored and advised students and community researchers from Black community organisations across the globe. His recent publications include ‘1981 – Black Liverpool Past and Present’ with Jimi Jagne, ‘In The Shadows Of The Big House: Twenty-First Century Antebellum Slave Cabins and Heritage Tourism in Louisiana’, and a chapter in ‘Fallen Monuments and Contested Memorials’ by Juliee Decker.

Dr Ama Biney (in person attendance)

Dr Ama Biney completed her undergraduate degree in African Studies in 1987 at The Centre of West African Studies (CWAS) at the University of Birmingham. Enthused by this initial introduction to Africa, Dr Biney immediately progressed to do an MA at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), the University of London that focused on Government & Politics of West and Southern Africa in 1988.

Dr Biney then spent 10 years working as a journalist with West Africa Magazine; freelancing; teaching IT skills to African migrants and refugees at the Africa Research & Information Bureau (ARIB) in South London. After this period of varied work, she then pursued her doctorate titled: ‘Kwame Nkrumah: An Intellectual Biography’ at SOAS, which was acquired in 2007.

Biney sees herself as a committed life-long learner and believe in the African proverb "each one, teach one". She is currently a Dr at the University of Liverpool, with her recent interests including Black British History, Caribbean History (particularly the Haitian Revolution), Decoloniality and Decolonisation, and African Social and Political History.

Professor Jason Arday (in person attendance)

Jason Arday is Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education. Previously, Jason was Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Glasgow in the School of Education, College of Social Sciences. Professor Arday’s research focuses on the areas of race and higher education, intersectionality and education, mental health and education, neurodiversity and cultural studies.

Professor Arday has also held the position of Associate Professor in Sociology at Durham University in the Department of Sociology and Deputy Executive Dean for People and Culture in the Faculty of Social Science and Health. He is a Visiting Professor at The Ohio State University in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, University of Glasgow in the School of Education and an Honorary Professor at Durham University in the Department of Sociology.

He is a Trustee of the Runnymede Trust, the UK’s leading Race Equality Thinktank and the British Sociological Association (BSA). Jason sits on the Centre for Labour and Social Studies (CLASS) National Advisory Panel, the NHS Race and Health Observatory Academic Reference Group and the ITV Cultural Advisory Council.

Dr Lioba Hirsch (online panel attendance)

Dr Lioba Hirsh is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow and Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh with an interest in the colonial and anti-Black entanglements of Western biomedicine and global health management. Hirsch’s research has focused on the historical development, contemporary management and colonial aftermath of British health interventions in West Africa. She also does critical work on humanitarianism, medicine and racism and institutional processes of decolonisation and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I). Between 2021 and she has worked on a Wellcome Trust-funded research project called ‘Care, Infrastructure and Antiblackness: the making of biomedicine in a Sierra Leonean Hospital’, first at the University of Liverpool (2021 - 2023) and now at the University of Edinburgh.

From November 2019 to May 2021 Dr Hirsch was a Research Fellow in the Centre for History in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) working on a project exploring the school’s colonial history. She has a BA in Political Sciences from Sciences Po Paris and an MSc in Political Sociology from the London School of Economics, and also holds a PhD in Geography and Global Health from University College London.

Laurence Westgaph (in person panel attendace)

Laurence Westgaph is a historian and independent researcher whose work reveals Liverpool’s role in the slave trade and colonialism, as well as celebrating the positive contributions of Black people to the city’s development and civic life. His Ph.D. thesis title is ‘African Liverpool: Black Community in a Slave Trade City’.

Laurence has written on these subjects for a range of publications, advised Historic England on their Liverpool listed buildings with connections to slavery, and is the Historian-in-Residence at National Museums Liverpool.

Most recently, through the Liverpool Black History Research Group, Laurence led the organisation of a permanent memorial to Pastor Daniels Ekarte who, amongst many remarkable contributions to the Liverpool Black community, campaigned against the Elder Dempster shipping line for Black seamen to achieve equal pay.

We look forward to seeing you all there!

Registrations are closed

Understanding Colonial Legacies and Exploring Restorative Action