December 2nd is the United Nation’s International Day for the Abolition of Slavery. Last month, IASH held a Speculative Lunch with the aim of bringing together colleagues from across the College of Humanities and Social Sciences to discuss reparations for slavery. Dr Nicola Frith, Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, reflects on her motivation for leading this initiative and reveals plans for further activities that emerged from the day.
Pierre Rouvier, design by Charles Ange Boily, engraver, 'Soyez libres et citoyens'. Engraving illustrating an early anti-slavery text published in France, 1789.
This informal event was held in anticipation of both the forthcoming 150th anniversary of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the US in 1865, and in the wake of recent calls by Caricom for European governments to engage in discussions on reparations.
My interest in reparations is derived from own research, which is funded by the AHRC’s Leadership Fellows scheme. This project, entitled ‘Mapping Memories of Slavery: Commemoration, Community and Identity in Contemporary France’, examines the work of activist groups in France and its overseas departments who are collectively seeking ways to overcome the legacies of slavery and the slave trade. The subject of reparations is an increasingly important area of study within this project, and I wanted to find other colleagues who might be interested in setting up a series of events to explore cross-disciplinary approaches to repairing the complex legacies of slavery.
In addition, I was interested in meeting colleagues who might participate in an important international conference that I am organizing in collaboration with Wheelock College in Boston, US. The conference is entitled ‘Repairing the Past, Imagining the Future: Reparations and Beyond…’ and will be held at the University of Edinburgh on 5–7 November 2015. The lunch offered me the opportunity to see what interest the subject of reparations might generate among academics working in different cognate disciplines, including history, sociology, law, cultural studies, justice, film and the arts more broadly, as well as bringing different national and linguistic perspectives to bear on the increasingly important subject of reparations.
The event attracted academics from multiple disciplinary backgrounds who had already worked in, or had interests connected to, the field of slavery studies and/or other histories of trauma. It was attended by eight academics working in different centres and schools across the College, including the Division of European Languages and Cultures (DELC), the Law School, the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies (SCDS), the Centre for African Studies (CAS) and the Global Justice Academy.
I had previously met most of the attendees to discuss my own work and how it might connect to their research interests and/or the interests of the different centres that they represented. Our discussion during the lunch was structured around a number of key themes, including: defining reparations beyond monetary payments, for example by linking them to social justice and cultural transformation; the importance of having an inter- and cross-disciplinary approach to reparations; collaborative links with other colleagues both within and outside of the University of Edinburgh; the possibility of setting up a series of events or workshops on reparations, including other histories of trauma; the possibility of applying for different internal and external funding streams; and, finally, the importance of public engagement and community building, such as connecting the conference to Black History Month.
The lunch has generated further interest both among colleagues within Edinburgh and beyond. The SCDS has kindly offered to fund some of the travel costs of one of our keynote speakers, Professor Verene Shepherd (University of the West Indies), an eminent historian in slavery studies and a key player in Caricom’s Reparations Commission.
Significantly, Sir Hilary Beckles, the Caricom Reparations Commission Chair and Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of the West Indies, has just agreed to act as our second keynote speaker. As well as working closely with the SCDS, I will be staying in contact with all those who attended to keep them up-to-date on any further developments and to see how we might continue to link together our schools, centres and research interests through widening definitions of reparations.
The next steps for the project will see it broadening its parameters by connecting to non-academic stakeholders. I will shortly be seeking knowledge exchange and impact funding from the College, as well as tapping into funding opportunities offered through the Global Justice Academy’s Innovative Initiative Fund to support both the conference in November and related knowledge exchange events, such Black History Month.
The event was a wonderful opportunity to bring together people from different disciplines and has served as a useful way of developing existing and generating new collaborations.
Nicola Frith joined the French section at the University of Edinburgh as a Chancellor’s Fellow in September 2014. She specialises in Francophone Postcolonial Studies, Slavery Studies and Memory Studies and is the holder of an AHRC early career Leadership Fellowship (2013–14) for a project entitled ‘Mapping Memories of Slavery: Commemoration, Community and Identity in Contemporary France’. This project aims to map activist networks within France and to foreground the complex and creative responses led by citizen groups as they engage culturally and politically with the afterlives of the history of slavery and the slave trade.