Lola Olufemi, who has joined Westminster’s Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media’s (CREAM) PhD Doctoral programme, was awarded a techne AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Studentship with CREAM and the Stuart Hall Foundation.
Lola Olufemi’s doctoral research project aims to conceptualise and define an understanding of UK black cultural activism (BCA). This timely project, which starts in September 2020, will establish a national intellectual and creative research platform for the current generation of cultural activists.
Lola will join an expanding cohort of doctoral researchers as artists and critics at CREAM, Westminster School of Arts, and as part of Stuart Hall Foundation’s international network of Scholars and Fellows. She is also the author of the recently published book entitled ‘Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power’.
Lola’s approach to the research brief re-focuses the project on feminism and anti-racist organising, which follows on from her previous work as a black feminist writer and organiser of workshops on feminism and histories of political organising in schools, universities and local communities.
Speaking about the doctoral programme, Lola Olufemi said: “I’m excited to join the CREAM PhD doctoral programme and to have the support of Stuart Hall Foundation, technē and the University of Westminster. It’s an honour to be included in a legacy of thinkers building on the work of Stuart Hall. This project aims to enable young organisers and artists to draw connections between the imaginative-revolutionary potential of their cultural production and material contained in the archive.”
CREAM researcher Roshini Kempadoo added: “There exists a generation of black activists, critics and artists whose voices, action and creativity need to be captured as vital knowledge for the future. Lola’s research in the UK at this time, in this moment, informed by Stuart Hall’s seminal thinking will contribute significantly to the work still to be done. This project will undoubtedly transform the cultural and political landscape that has recently been set in motion through anti-racist protests.”
