Alumni & Students Mark Black History Month

October is Black History Month and Wadham will see distinguished alumni and special guests return to College to share about their lives, careers, and experiences.

As is fast becoming a Wadham tradition, students have stepped forward to host the events, making inter-generational conversation a focal point. It's an embodiment of the theme itself, bringing contemporary students into direct contact with living story-tellers of Wadham's own black history, imperfect as that history may be.

The line-up includes both in-person and online events and alumni are welcome to any attend of them.

This first event featured screen-writer Abby Ajayi in conversation with students, Fatima El-Faki and Kadija Owusu-Kabba, and is now available to view online.

Still to come is ceramic and performance artist, Shawanda Corbett; author, academic and cultural critic, Diran Adebayo; and modern slavery researcher, Siddharth Kara. Further details on the speakers and their events are below.

Please join us as we mark Black History Month at Wadham!

Born to Nigerian parents and raised in London, Abby Ajayi (Law, 1998) began her career working in script development at the BBC before turning to writing. In the UK, she has written episodes of series including: Eastenders, Casualty and Hollyoaks.

Abby was a Fulbright Scholar and studied screenwriting in New York. In the US, she has worked as a writer-producer on shows including: Riches, Inventing Anna, The First Lady, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and How To Get Away With Murder. Abby also writes fiction and splits her time between London and Los Angeles.

Student co-ordinators: Fatima El-Faki and Kadija Owusu-Kabba

Shawanda Corbett (MFA, 2016) is a ceramic and performance artist whose bodily and architectural ceramics communicate different perspectives across cultures, eras, and geographies and interrogate the idea of a ‘complete body’.

Her latest work, ‘A Healing is Coming’, is part of the British Pavillion’s ‘Dancing Before the Moon’ exhibition currently being featured at the 2023 Venice Biennale. Shawanda’s art is inspired by her childhood memories which are rooted in her experiences as a Black woman, with a differently abled body, growing up in the American South.

Her expansive practice combines ceramics, paintings and performance to question the idea of the ‘complete’ body. Each of her hand-thrown ceramic vessels are inspired by real people and are frequently incorporated into politically charged performances in which Corbett’s own body leaves traces on the pottery vessels and surfaces.

Student co-ordinator: Harin Turrell, with alumnus Alexander Stavrou (MFA, 2020)

Diran Adebayo (Law, 1986) is an author, academic and cultural critic best known for his inventive, stylish tales of Afro-British lives.

His debut novel, the picaresque 'Some Kind of Black', set among the sounds and slangs of the early nineties, was hailed as breaking new ground for the ‘London novel’, and won him numerous awards, including the Writers Guild of Great Britain’s New Writer of the Year Award, the 1996 Saga Prize, a Betty Trask Award, and The Authors’ Club’s ‘Best First Novel’ award. It was also long listed for the Booker Prize and is now a Virago Modern Classic. In 2022 he adapted the book for a BBC Radio 4 dramatization.

His second novel, the futuristic ‘neo-noir’ 'My Once Upon a Time' was also widely praised and solidified his reputation as a ground-breaker. Diran co-edited ‘New Writing 12‘, the British Council’s annual anthology of British and Commonwealth literature, and he has also written stories and scripts for television and radio, including the 2005 documentary ‘Out of Africa’ for BBC2, and for anthologies such as ‘OxTales’.

As a critic, he’s written for most national newspapers and magazines and appeared on ‘Newsnight’, ‘The Culture Show’, ‘This Week’ and the ‘Today’ programme.

Siddharth Kara (University of Nottingham) is part of the Rights Lab’s Measurement and Geographies Programme and is a British Academy Global Professor (2020-2024). He was one of only 10 academics globally to receive the prestigious BA Global Professorship in 2020.

His books on modern slavery are 'Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery' (2009); 'Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia' (2012); and 'Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective' (2017). His first book was adapted into a Hollywood film, Trafficked.

During 22 years of field research, he has travelled to more than 50 countries to document the cases of thousands of enslaved people and child labourers. He advises several UN agencies and numerous governments on anti-slavery policy and law. His research as a BA Global Professor with the Rights Lab will provide the first comprehensive academic study of slavery and child labour in cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Student co-ordinator: Zarin Fariha (MSc in Cognitive Evolutionary Anthropology)

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