In this workshop, led by a leading specialist on British colonialism and its afterlives, we will learn how to talk about Britain's colonial past with nuance and concision.
Detailed Description
Monday 1 June 2026 at 2pm-4pm
£40 per person
Online via MS Teams
Open to: Teachers, journalists, community workers and heritage professionals, the groups I think we could best target.
Speaker: Professor Alan Lester
In this workshop, led by a leading specialist on British colonialism and its afterlives, we will learn how to talk about Britain's colonial past with nuance and concision. We will explore how to convey the complexity, diversity and contradiction of a four hundred year long phenomenon without reducing it to a simplistic matter of 'balance' between 'good' and 'bad' and without ignoring the ongoing imprint of its racial inequities.
In this workshop, we will discuss the perils of a 'balance sheet approach' to colonial history, why the notion of 'imperial legacies' is problematic and how best to talk about those continuities through which the past has shaped the present, especially when it comes to racism.
Professor Alan Lester has taught British colonial history for 25 years at the University of Sussex, writing many research articles and monographs whilst advising on best-selling popular history books, school textbooks, TV series and digitisation projects for national institutions. He is editor of The Truth About Empire: Real Histories of British Colonialism and writes a blog series challenging misrepresentations of the past in the media. See for example: https://alanlester.co.uk/blog/the-west-africa-squadron-memorial-campaign-an-exercise-in-virtue-signalling-and-denial/
For enquiries please contact us at socialchangehub@sussex.ac.uk.
Please read out terms and conditions and cancellation policy on Sussex Social Change Hub website.
