FORTHCOMING EVENTS

February

Human Rights Seminar Series: Food Security
All welcome
Speakers: Patrick Holden, Director of the Soil Association
Date: Tuesday 9 February
Time: 13:30 - 14:30
Venue: Room G22/24 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

Human Rights Seminar Series: A Human Rights Perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility: The Ins and Outs of Social Auditing - CANCELLED

Speakers: Lara Blecher, CSR Consultant
Date: Tuesday 9 February
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

Caribbean Seminar Series: Nations unbound: the ‘uncomfortable’ tobacco history of Puerto Rico, Connecticut and Cuba, 1898-2008
This paper is part of a wider research project linking migration and commodity production centred around ‘El Habano’, or premium Havana cigar - the luxury tobacco product for which Cuba is famous the world over, and which has also been much imitated, as the seed, agricultural and industrial know-how, and human capital were all transplanted to replicate the quality product. In this context, the paper charts what has been described as the ‘uncomfortable’ tobacco history of Puerto Rico. Having grown initially in tandem with Cuban tobacco, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was taken over and developed by US capital in the aftermath of the end of Spanish colonial rule and the US invasion in 1898; it was then destroyed in the mid-20th century in the US-blessed Puerto Rican strategy known as Operation Bootstrap. The early part of the 20th century saw considerable numbers of Puerto Rican cigar workers heading north to US centres of cigar manufacturing, especially New York City, where they joined Cuban émigré cigar workers of both the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By the mid-20th century, tobacco had all but gone from Puerto Rico, when Puerto Rican state-engineered migrant farm labour programmes of the third quarter of the 20th century took displaced farmers and agricultural labourers from what were once Puerto Rican tobacco areas to the tobacco fields of the US Eastern Seaboard. A prime destination was Connecticut, whose own tobacco history came into its own in the early 19th century with the import of Havana Seed and even more so in the late 19th century, with Sumatra Seed, itself evolved from Havana, and from which the famous Connecticut Shade cigar wrapper in turn came about. Connecticut entered the 21st century with only a fraction of this left, production having relocated south, to the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Nicaragua. The paper draws out the interconnections across time and territories, decentring, and thereby exploring the conceptual implications for historicizing a transnational understanding of Puerto Rican as well as Connecticut and Havana cigar history.
Speakers: Jean Stubbs, Associate Fellow, ISA

Jean Stubbs is a historian whose specialist research interests span race, gender, labour and tobacco in Cuba, the Greater Caribbean region and beyond. With a particular focus on the nineteenth century to the present, her approach has been to bridge the political, economic, and socio-cultural divides that are the legacy of Spanish, French, Dutch and British colonial rule in the region’s insular and surrounding mainland territories and diaspora comunities. In this context, she is currently researching issues of sovereignty and migration through the prism of the Havana cigar as a commodity produced by island and émigré Cubans across the Americas, the Atlantic World and globally. She is co-director of the Commodities of Empire British Academy Research Project in collaboration with the Open University’s Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/ferguson-centre/commodities-of-empire/index.html; a member of the British Academy Latin American and Caribbean Panel; and editor of the International Journal of Cuban Studies http://www.cubastudiesjournal.org.

She holds a BA in Government from the University of Essex and PhD in History from the Birkbeck College London and has a long association with the Caribbean programme at ISA and its predecessor Institute for Latin American Studies, as well as its sister Institute for Commonwealth Studies. She was previously Director of London Metropolitan University’s Caribbean Studies Centre http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/csc and has held teaching and research fellowships funded by the Rockefeller, Ford, McArthur Foundations at the Caribbean and Latin American Centre, University of Florida; Cuban Research Institute, Florida International University; University of Puerto Rico; and Centre for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College, City University of New York. She served as 2002-3 President of the regional Caribbean Studies Association and 1993-5 Chair of the UK Society for Caribbean Studies. Her early work combined media and voluntary sector work and she retains her links in those fields.
Date: Wednesday 17 February
Time: 17:00 - 19:00
Venue: Room G32 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

iceandfire Theatre: Asylum Monologues
To coincide with the UN’s World Day for Social Justice, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies is proud to host an evening of performance and debate, highlighting issues related to seeking asylum in the UK. iceandfire Theatre presents a rehearsed reading of 'Asylum Monologues', first-hand accounts from asylum seekers living in the UK accompanied by a screening by London Detainee Support Group of animated short '1000 Voices'. A panel discussion and Q & A will follow, led by human rights academics from the Institute of Commonwealth Studies.

This event is free and open to the public, but we ask that you register your interest.
Speakers: iceandfire Theatre
Date: Friday 19 February
Time: 17:30 - 21:00
Venue: The Chancellor's Hall (Senate House, First Floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

ICwS Research Seminar Series

Speakers: Marika Sherwood (Senior Fellow at ICwS)
The International African Service Bureau 1937 – 1939

James Chiriyankandath (Senior Fellow at ICwS)
Zionists and Indian nationalists: imagining nations, creating states
Date: Wednesday 24 February
Time: 13:30 - 14:30
Venue: Room G21a (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

Human Rights Seminar Series: Human Rights Misrepresentations: Post-Genocide Politics and Justice in Rwanda

Speakers: Dr Phil Clark, Research Fellow in Courts and Public Policy, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford University amd Convenor, Oxford Transitional Justice Research
Date: Wednesday 24 February
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Venue: Room 276 (Stewart House, Second floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

Black Britain Seminar Series: Positive African self-identity and the 2007 bi-centenary year
The seminar focuses on some of the psychological, philosophical, cultural and sociological issues that enable people of African descent to survive in a positive manner in the United Kingdom and the wider western diaspora. Arguments are illustrated by reference to the development of a 2007 bi-centenary African-centric community project based in Leeds.
Speakers: Carl Hylton
Date: Wednesday 24 February
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Venue: Room G35 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

Fratricide and Fraternité Seminar Series - Opening Conference: Fratricide

Speakers: For further information click here
Date: Thursday 25 February - Friday 26 February
Time: 09:30 - 17:30
Venue: The Beveridge Hall (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Contact: kirrily.pells@sas.ac.uk

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March

Serving the Next Generation - The Commonwealth in the 21st Century: A Strange Alchemy of Life and Law
Please note this lecture will begin promptly at 12.30pm.

THIS EVENT IS PART OF THE LECTURE SERIES TO MARK THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF BOTH THE INSTITUTE AND THE MODERN COMMONWEALTH.
Speakers: Justice Albie Sachs

Albie Sachs has been a Justice of South Africa’s Constitutional Court since 1994. A lawyer and anti-apartheid activist, Sachs is also the author of several books on various subjects including human rights, culture, gender and the environment. His books include ‘The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs’ covering his time in solitary confinement in apartheid South Africa; and his struggle after losing his right arm in a car bomb in Maputo recounted in ‘The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter’. In his most recent book ‘Free Diary of Albie Sachs’ (Random House South Africa 2004) Sachs says the challenge was to write about happiness instead of pain and suffering. In recent years he has been passionate about the architecture and décor of the ‘Peoples Palace’- the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
Date: Monday 1 March
Time: 12:30 - 14:00
Venue: The Beveridge Hall (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

Decolonization Research Seminar
A Round Table discussion on new directions in the study of decolonization.

Convened by Professor Philip Murphy and Dr Sarah Stockwell
Speakers: Dr Jonathan Silberstein-Loeb (University of Oxford) - ‘Reuters and Decolonization, 1865-1945’
Date: Monday 1 March
Time: 17:30 - 19:00
Venue: The Court Room (Senate House, First Floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

Caribbean Seminar Series: Technologies of the word: towards a Caribbean literary orality
One of the emphases of Anglophone Caribbean literature and the literary criticism it has engendered is the interrelation between the region’s local oral cultures (including both traditional and non-traditional oral forms) and its modern fictional creations. In the last few decades, for example, attention has been given to the various ways in which Caribbean writers have transposed oral forms (songs, stories, myths, music, rituals, etc.) into poetry, prose and drama as well as to transcriptions of the “voice” in printed texts and to performance aesthetics.

While these and other aspects of a Caribbean literary orality will be addressed, the focus of the presentation is on current developments, as revealed in recent fiction and criticism, in the debate about the relationship between oral and print cultures, the spoken and the written word, and voice and text in Caribbean political and literary history. One major argument is that Caribbean literary orality, in theory and practice, refuses any suggestion of a hierarchical relationship between and mutual exclusivity of oral/scribal, spoken/written and also rejects the evolutionary oral-written-print model that still finds currency in intellectual thought. Furthermore, creative and critical examples demonstrate that oral and visual (writing and print) cultures in the Caribbean have not only continued to co-exist, modify, and reinforce each other but are also now adapting to and being adapted by a culture that has emerged around more recent technologies such as the computer and the Internet. The creative and critical writings of Kamau Brathwaite, particularly those composed in and about his computer generated Sycorax Video Style language, are used as a touchstone in the presentation.
Speakers: Hyacinth Simpson, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada

Dr. Hyacinth Simpson is an associate professor in the Department of English and the MA program in Immigration & Settlement Studies at Ryerson University in Toronto where she specializes in Caribbean literature, orality, “immigrant” writing, and diaspora and transnational studies. Her articles and reviews have appeared in The Toronto Review, the Journal of West Indian Literature, the Journal of Caribbean Studies, Wasafiri, Interventions, Callaloo, Caribbean Review of Books, and Ethnic Studies in Canada, among others. She was guest editor of a double issue of the Journal of West Indian Literature and is the Editor of MaComère, the peer-reviewed journal of the Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars. She has also produced audiovisual material on Caribbean authors (including the CD MiddlePassages: A Lecture by Kamau Brathwaite, 2006) and is currently editing a book of essays titled Caribbean Migrations: Essays in Transnationalism and Diaspora.
Date: Wednesday 3 March
Time: 17:00 - 19:00
Venue: Room G32 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

Human Rights Seminar Series: Freedom of Expression and the Advocacy of Religious Hatred that constitutes Incitement to Discrimination, Hostility or Violence - an exploration of the inter-relationship between Articles 19 and 20 of the International Conven

Speakers: Kishan Manocha, Barrister and Fellow of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies
Date: Thursday 4 March
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Venue: Room 276 (Stewart House, Second floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

Decolonization Research Seminar
A Round Table discussion on new directions in the study of decolonization.

Convened by Professor Philip Murphy and Dr Sarah Stockwell
Speakers: The End of the Third Portuguese Empire: Themes and Perspectives.

Dr Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo (Institute of Social Sciences, Universidade de Lisboa)

Dr Pedro Aires Oliveira (Institute of Contemporary History, Universidade Nova de Lisboa)

Dr Luís Nuno Rodrigues (Center for the Study of Portuguese Contemporary History, Lisbon University Institute)
Date: Monday 15 March
Time: 17:30 - 19:00
Venue: The Court Room (Senate House, First Floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

Serving the Next Generation - The Commonwealth in the 21st Century: Feeding the World in the 21st Century
THIS EVENT IS PART OF THE LECTURE SERIES TO MARK THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF BOTH THE INSTITUTE AND THE MODERN COMMONWEALTH.
Speakers: Sir Gordon Conway, Chief Scientific Officer, DFID
Date: Tuesday 16 March
Time: 17:30 - 19:00
Venue: Lecture Theatre, IALS
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

Caribbean Seminar Series: European and Caribbean? The European Union’s Policy to the Caribbean Overseas Countries and Territories
The European Union (EU) is presently developing a new approach to the British and Dutch Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT) in the Caribbean in order to link in with the new approach to the independent countries of the region set out in the recently concluded Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA). The EPA seeks closer ties with the OCT and the French Overseas Departments and some exploratory meetings have already taken place to see how this could best be done. The EU is keen to support these closer links but also argues that it needs a distinctive policy the OCTs different to that for the independent Caribbean territories. The presentation will explore the proposals and discussion on the content of a new policy to the OCTs and examine whether the new policy may work against developing closer ties within the Caribbean rather than improving and developing them as is hoped.
Speakers: Paul Sutton, London Metropolitan University

Dr Paul Sutton is Research Professor in Caribbean Studies in the Centre for Caribbean Studies at London Metropolitan University. He has written extensively on the international relations and development policies of the Caribbean and has acted as a consultant for international organisations on Caribbean issues and as an advisor to the British government on its policy in the region. His publications include studies of European Union policy in the Caribbean, notably Europe and the Caribbean (1991).
Date: Wednesday 17 March
Time: 17:00 - 19:00
Venue: Room G32 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

Human Rights Seminar Series: Accountability for one? The Special Tribunal for Lebanon in context

Speakers: Professor Chandra Lekha Sriram, Professor of Human Rights and Director, Centre on Human Rights in Conflict, University of East London
Date: Wednesday 17 March
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Venue: Room 273 (Stewart House, Second floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

ICwS Research Seminar Series

Speakers: Richard Bourne (Senior Fellow at ICwS)
Marine Fisheries in the Commonwealth (The Commonwealth Fisheries Programme)

ICwS PhD Student (TBC)
Date: Tuesday 23 March
Time: 13:30 - 14:30
Venue: Room G21a (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

Serving the Next Generation - The Commonwealth in the 21st Century: Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals
Please note that timings are provisional and subject to change.

THIS EVENT IS PART OF THE LECTURE SERIES TO MARK THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF BOTH THE INSTITUTE AND THE MODERN COMMONWEALTH.
Speakers: Professor Christopher Colclough , University of Cambridge
Date: Tuesday 23 March
Time: 17:30 - 19:00
Venue: Room 274/275 (Stewart House, Second floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

Black Britain Seminar Series: Who was "Black" in 18th Century England?
This paper examines linguistic, cultural and historical implications of the words and phrases used to describe dark-skinned people, not only those of African or Indian sub-continental origin, before the advent of ‘scientific racism’.
Speakers: Kathy Chater
Date: Wednesday 24 March
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Venue: Room G35 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

Fratricide and Fraternité (Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series): Neighbourly Denunciation

Speakers: 'Spiritual Insecurity and Neighbourly Violence: Resisting Satanic Bloodsuckers in Malawi', Adam Ashforth (University of Michigan)

Julian Goodare (University of Edinburgh)

Paul Moore (Birkbeck College)

Chair: Alessandro Scafi (Warburg Institute)
Date: Friday 26 March
Time: 14:00 - 16:30
Venue: Room G22/24 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Contact: kirrily.pells@sas.ac.uk

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April

Fratricide and Fraternité (Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series): Intimate Atrocities

Speakers: TBC
Date: Friday 23 April
Time: 14:00 - 16:30
Venue: Room G35 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Contact: kirrily.pells@sas.ac.uk

Human Rights Seminar Series: (TBC)

Speakers: Dr Pilar Domingo, Research Fellow in the Politics and Governance team, Overseas Development Institute
Date: Wednesday 28 April
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Venue: Room 273 (Stewart House, Second floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

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May

Black Britain Seminar Series: White Women and Black History - the case of Catherine Impey

Speakers: Caroline Bressey
Date: Wednesday 12 May
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Venue: Room G35 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

Fratricide and Fraternité (Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series): Perpetrators/Bystanders/Rescuers

Speakers: TBC
Date: Friday 14 May
Time: 14:00 - 16:30
Venue: Room 273 (Stewart House, Second floor)
Contact: kirrily.pells@sas.ac.uk

Understanding South India
It is widely recognised around the world (and around India) that there is something different – and special – about South India, but there is little understanding of how and why that is so. To address this problem, and to share ideas on important research topics (present and future), the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, will organise a one-day workshop for South India specialists working in diverse disciplines.

Our discussions will – unusually – be pitched at two different levels. We invite researchers to speak for 10 to 15 minutes each, dividing their comments roughly equally between two questions:

1. What – in plain language -- are the important things about South India that non-specialists should understand?

2. What important topics in the study of South India have recently been, or should soon be, tackled by researchers -- and why are they important?
Speakers:
Date: Friday 28 May
Time: 10:00 - 16:00
Venue: The Court Room (Senate House, First Floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

Fratricide and Fraternité (Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series): Drawing Lines

Speakers: TBC
Date: Friday 28 May
Time: 14:00 - 16:30
Venue: Room G35 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Contact: kirrily.pells@sas.ac.uk

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June

Black Britain Seminar Series: Black West Indians in Britain and the Politics of Empire, c.1931-1948

Speakers: Daniel Whittall
Date: Wednesday 2 June
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Venue: Room G35 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

Serving the Next Generation - The Commonwealth in the 21st Century: Movement for Colonial Freedom
Please note that timings are provisional and subject to change.

THIS EVENT IS PART OF THE LECTURE SERIES TO MARK THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF BOTH THE INSTITUTE AND THE MODERN COMMONWEALTH.
Speakers: The Rt Hon Tony Benn
Date: Wednesday 9 June
Time: 17:30 - 18:30
Venue: The Beveridge Hall (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Contact: troy.rutt@sas.ac.uk

Fratricide and Fraternité (Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series): Truth, Justice and Reparations

Speakers: TBC
Date: Friday 25 June
Time: 14:00 - 16:30
Venue: The Court Room (Senate House, First Floor)
Contact: kirrily.pells@sas.ac.uk

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September

Fratricide and Fraternité (Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series): The Everyday Afterwards

Speakers: TBC
Date: Friday 24 September
Time: 14:00 - 16:30
Venue: Room G22/24 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Contact: kirrily.pells@sas.ac.uk

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October

Fraternité: Closing Conference of the Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series

Speakers: TBC
Date: Thursday 28 October - Friday 29 October
Time: 09:00 - 18:00
Venue: The Beveridge Hall (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Contact: kirrily.pells@sas.ac.uk