Trailblazing historian delivers prestigious British Academy Lecture at the University of Leeds

Leading academic delivers prestigious lecture at the University of Leeds

Affirming the history of African and Caribbean people in Britain is “a continual necessity”, a trailblazing historian has argued during a prestigious lecture at the University of Leeds in partnership with the Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute (LAHRI).

Professor Hakim Adi, the first African-British historian to become a Professor of History in the UK, delivered the annual British Academy Public Lecture on ‘Affirming the History of African and Caribbean People’ at Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall in the School of Music on Friday 22 March.

Professor Hakim Adi delivers lecture at Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall. Photo credit: Dustin Smith, Skywall Photography

Over 60 years since Hugh Trevor-Roper – Professor of History at the University of Oxford – declared that there was no African history to teach and ‘only the history of Europeans in Africa,’ Professor Adi argued that affirming the history of African and Caribbean people enhances the study of the history of Britain and plays a vital role in countering Eurocentrism, both in higher education and beyond.

Affirming the history of African and Caribbean people in Britain is a continual process, a continual necessity. It is sometimes difficult. It involves a bit of work, effort and struggle. But it is important that we do not allow people who are racist to attack it, or universities to throw it aside as if it is rubbish. It is part of the history of this country and part of the history of the world that everybody should appreciate and understand.

Earlier in the day Professor Adi met with students from the MA Race and Resistance programme in the Brotherton Library. With Sarah Prescott, Literary Archivist in Special Collections, the group discussed 7-8 items from the Peepal Tree Press Archive, which the Library has recently acquired.

Audience enjoy lecture by Professor Hakim Adi. Photo credit: Dustin Smith, Skywall Photography

Professor Hakim Adi is an award-winning scholar and the first historian of African heritage to become a professor of history in Britain when he was appointed Professor of the History of Africa and the African Diaspora in 2015 at the University of Chichester, where he established the MRes in the History of Africa and African Diaspora.

Professor Adi’s latest book, African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History, was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2023. Starting with the Libyan legionaries who patrolled Hadrian’s Wall and the “Black Tudors” who served in the land’s most eminent households, the book spans the long history of African and Caribbean people in Britain and highlights the vital contributions of these men and women to our collective achievements like universal suffrage, victory over fascism and the NHS.

Running since 1908 and delivered by the most distinguished academics in the UK and beyond, the British Academy’s lecture programme ‘showcases the best scholarship in the arts and humanities’.