When does the call for ‘speaking out’ against sexual violence begin to silence victim-survivors? Through reflecting on the #MeToo moment, Allison McKibban argues mainstream Western movements against sexual violence are often insidiously…
Can medical institutions participate in colonial violence? Allison McKibban argues the involuntary sterilization of tens of thousands of Native American women in the 1970s must be rehistoricised as part of the U.S. government’s broader…
In the early morning on Sunday 18 January 1981, a fire broke out at 439 New Cross Road in the London Borough of Lewisham. The fire was almost certainly the result of a deliberate racist attack. Thirteen young Black Britons lost their lives…
History Workshop Journal (HWJ) and History Workshop Online (HWO) are seeking to appoint two early career historians as Editorial Fellows in the academic year 2021-22. Closing date 2 August.
What meanings can be attached to divisive symbols, and with what consequences? Isabel Gilbert explores the history of the Confederate flag and its reception, from the Civil War to the Dukes of Hazzard and, eventually, the Capitol Riots.
Molly Corlett reflects on the links between her research on racial trauma in the eighteenth-century, and her work for youth justice reform in Britain today.
As Donald Trump is acquitted for inciting the Capitol riots, Micah Jones asks what justice looks like in a legal system that privileges whiteness. To understand the roots of the spectacular events at the Capitol, she argues, we must turn…
How can racialised and Islamophobic terms in common currency in Sri Lanka today be traced back to British colonial rule in the late nineteenth century? Shamara Wettimuny explores the formation of racialised colonial identities and legacies…
The Black Report, a landmark critique of health inequalities that barely discussed ‘race’, turns forty today. Grace Redhead and Jesse Olszynko-Gryn investigate the legacy of the report for the age of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter.
A culture of hyper-vigilantism and the conflation of skin colour with criminality did not begin with the abolition of slavery or with the current age of mass incarceration. Joseph Yannielli and Christine Whyte explore its 18th-century…
Analogies to the Second World War are a recurring theme in modern British history. The seeming orthodoxy in Britain in 2020 is that the nation is at war, on a scale not known since the Second World War. The enemy, this time the coronavirus,…
Jennifer Davis warns that the official sympathy and acknowledgment afforded to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020, was not extended in London's recent past, and may not inform the future of policing policy in the UK.
The last fortnight has seen many statues associated with racism and colonialism torn down. When were they originally put up, and what can that tell about the history of whiteness and empire? Peter Hill explores.
How has the whitewashing of race science and eugenics shaped racist ideologies in the present-day political mainstream? Anne Hanley argues that genetic determinism continues to shape deep-seated assumptions about ‘natural’ racial and…
Meleisa Ono-George introduces her new feature for HWO on community-engaged histories of Black Britain - "Power in the Telling" - which explores how history is not just about what is known, but also about the process and politics of its…
‘Anglo-Saxons’ has long been associated with the early English people, but this label suffers from a long history of misuse. Mary Rambaran-Olm explores the racist legacy of this term.
What does a family of wealthy philanthropists have to do with a gang of drug traffickers? The intertwined relationship between prominent businesses and criminal traffickers is probably as old as trade itself.
Following the ground-breaking Royal Historical Society report on Race, Ethnicity & Equality, one of the Report's co-authors, Jonathan Saha, responds to criticism and calls for change.
At a moment when pundits continue to pronounce that multiculturalism has ‘failed’ in Britain and across Europe, this symposium will explore the role and responsibilities of anti-racist scholarship.
Continuing our History Workshop World Cup series, Neil Carter tells the story of the English footballers caught up in the tensions of Nazi appeasement.
In the second of our History Workshop World Cup series, Charlotte Lydia Riley explores England football fans' relationship to national identity, white masculinity, and post-imperial melancholia.
Citizenship 'stripping' laws have expanded the idea of a failed citizen, a boundary shaped by racialised and Islamophobic 'moral panic'. May Robson examines what it means to be an illegal immigrant in Britain.