10 March: Black British Literature and Anti-Racism – Dr Vedrana Velickovic

Event date: Wednesday 10 March 2021 (1:00 – 2:00 pm)

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In celebration of International Women’s Day, the Universities of Brighton and Sussex are jointly hosting award-winning science journalist and author Angela Saini.

Vedrana is a Principal Lecturer in Literature in the School of Humanities and Social Science. Vedrana’s research is focused on contemporary Black British and Eastern European literature and her work is animated by the transdisciplinary fields of postcolonial, post-communist and queer studies. She is the author of Eastern Europeans in Contemporary Literature and Culture: Imagining New Europe (2019), numerous articles on contemporary literature and theory, and is currently working on her next monograph on contemporary Black British women’s writing. With Dr Vy Rajapillai, Vedrana co-leads DeCol student-staff collective and has recently been appointed as the University’s academic lead for decolonising the curriculum.

In this presentation, Vedrana will reflect on her experience of teaching Black British literature. In 2014, she organised the inaugural conference of the Black British Women’s Writing Network (BBWWN), an international network of scholars working on Black British Women’s Writing, at the University of Brighton with Bernardine Evaristo as a keynote speaker. In 2019, Evaristo was the first Black British woman to win the Booker Prize. While prize-winning authors such as Bernardine Evaristo, Zadie Smith, Andrea Levy, Jackie Kay and Diana Evans have received substantial popular attention and recognition in recent years, their inclusion in the curriculum remains sporadic. By revisiting some of these writers whose books, as Andrea Levy forcefully put it, should be placed where they belong – “squarely in the mainstream of British history” (Levy, 2011) and education, the presentation will highlight their relevance for a decolonised curriculum and ongoing anti-racist work.


This event is part of the Race Awareness Speaker Sessions.

As part of the University’s ongoing commitment to supporting student success and reducing the degree-awarding gap for students from Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority backgrounds the Learning and Teaching Hub is pleased to invite you to the Race Awareness Speaker Sessions for the 2020/21 academic year. The sessions are intended to provide an informal discussion arena to allow all interested colleagues to focus on sharing experience and best practice in this vital area of work.

The current schedule of sessions is shown below, if you would like to register to attend one or more please do so via the online booking form.

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