Dominic Ongwen: The abducted child soldier tried for crimes against humanity

by Karen Williams Uganda’s government recently announced that it has ended the manhunt for the leader of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony. At its height, the group wreaked havoc in northern Uganda, before dispersing across central Africa in recent years. It continues to attack civilians in the Central African Republic and the Democratic… Read More

Fleshing Out a Narrative of Illness: Notes on the Flesh

by Shahd Alshammari  I was slowly getting worse. The numbness escalated and was starting to resemble paralysis. My most terrifying moment was the minute I looked in the mirror, found that my curls were rebelling even more than the usual, and I was unable to tame them. Brushing my hair was no longer an option. My… Read More

Stories of migration and exile: in conversation with writer Olumide Popoola

by Yasmin Gunaratnam  “Calculate is angry because all of his things were stolen in Puglia. He has nothing but his good English. He went to the police…He didn’t think. Next thing he was standing in a police station and someone wanted to fingerprint him. But you can’t get fingerprinted there. Unless you want to stay.… Read More

Diversity initiatives don’t work, they just make things worse: the ideological function of diversity in the cultural industries

by Anamik Saha  edited by Yasmin Gunaratnam Dev Patel might have won the award for Best Supporting Actor (that’s Dev Patel and not Riz Ahmed, Burberry), but when the nominees for the 2017 BAFTA Awards were announced, the lack of racial (and class) diversity amongst the nominees felt wearingly inevitable. What is more troubling is how… Read More

Reclaiming ‘race’ in postcolonialism: A personal reflection on the politics of the racial experience

by Amal Abu-Bakare and edited by Xavia Warren  This past October, while reading Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture, I came across the following poetic verse: “I am standing here in your poem-unsatisfied.” (1994:xxi) Originating from Eastern War Time, a poem by the radical feminist Adrienne Rich, this verse was highlighted by the famous literary critic and… Read More

Apocalypse and precarity: Iranian online humor and Trump’s victory

by Sara Tafakori and Gilda Seddighi  ‘From the American people to Iranian social media users: if your expert opinions and discussions about the American election have ended, please do shut up for a moment and let us Americans work out what the heck we do now’. This tweet by a presenter of a diasporic Iranian… Read More

Martha Solomons: The slave’s daughter and Countess of Stamford who made my life possible

by Karen Williams The question from the Pakistani government minister was not unfamiliar to me: “And what are you, are you a Zulu?” It was my early days in Islamabad and the official’s gentle ribbing was a common question. Yet this time, I was speechless. Floundering, I grasped at half-sentences, well aware that people around… Read More