The Profits of Slavery and the Wealth of Universities: A Transatlantic Conversation

Join Dr. Afua Cooper for a presentation on the Lord Dalhousie Scholarly Panel on Slavery and Race, followed by conversation with Danni Ebanks-Ingram and Dr. Asha Rogers. Dr. Michell Chresfield will chair.

The Report on Lord Dalhousie’s History on Slavery and Race, headed by historian and artist Dr. Afua Cooper, was submitted in 2019 at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. The panel looked into Lord Dalhousie’s views on race and put forward recommendations for how campus might be accountable for past and present connections to anti-Black racism. The University of Birmingham’s Centre for the Study of North America is delighted that Dr. Afua Cooper has accepted our invitation to tell us about the work of the panel she chaired, and engage in dialogue about that panel’s report and its resonance for universities and wider communities on both sides of the Atlantic. Chaired by Dr. Michell Chresfield, this event will begin with a presentation by Dr. Cooper on the Report, followed by dialogue between Dr. Cooper, Dr. Asha Rogers, and Danni Ebanks-Ingram. The event will then open the conversation to the audience. 

Panellist Biographies

Dr. Afua Cooper, Dalhousie University

Afua Cooper is the Chair of the Scholarly Panel on Lord Dalhousie's Relationship to Race and Slavery and co-author of the Report. She is also the former James Robinson Johnston Chair in Black Canadian Studies. Her research interests are African Canadian studies, with specific regard to the period of enslavement and emancipation in 18th and 19th century Canada and the Black Atlantic; African-Nova Scotian history; political consciousness; community building and culture; slavery’s aftermath; Black youth studies.

Danni Ebanks-Ingram

Danni Ebanks-Ingram has a multidisciplinary practice consisting of performance art, community engagement, producing while touching on elements of queerness and blackness. Throughout Danni's work there is a clear connection to understanding and exploring aspects that underpin our society such as economics, socio-political and environmental elements of life. Currently Danni is a Co-Founder & the Creative Engagement at CIVIC SQUARE; a public square, neighbourhood lab, and creative + participatory platform focused on regenerative civic and social infrastructure within neighbourhoods. CIVIC SQUARE works alongside the local neighbourhood, to offer a bold approach to visioning, building and investing in civic infrastructure for neighbourhoods of the future.

Dr. Asha Rogers, University of Birmingham

Dr. Rogers teaches and researches modern and contemporary writing in English from across postcolonial world (including Britain). She has special interests in the culture-forming work of institutions, the interfaces between the modern state and literary culture, and twentieth-century literary history in a global context. A South Londoner of dual English-Indian heritage with family roots in Ireland, Kenya, and North India, Dr. Rogers studies at the University of Sheffield and Oxford, and taught at Queen Mary University of London before joining the faculty in the Department of English Literature at the University of Birmingham. She has also worked in community development, community arts, campaigning, and multifaith chaplaincy. 

Dr. Michell Chresfield, University of Birmingham

Dr. Chresfield researches and teaches about cultural and intellectual history, the history of science and medicine, and the history of racial formation and identity making in twentieth century America. Having grown up in Alabama and New York City, she studied at Notre Dame University and Vanderbilt University and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh before joining the History Department at the University of Birmingham.