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Decolonization’s Discontents: Public Lecture by Dr Elisabeth Leake (Tufts)

When: Thursday, March 6, 2025, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Where: Montagu Lecture Theatre (GC601), Graduate Centre, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS

A part of IHSS Visiting Fellow Dr Elisabeth Leake's (Tufts University) events, organised by Raphael Samuel History Centre, a partnership between Birkbeck, University of London and Queen Mary University of London

While scholars have generally agreed that decolonization was about much more than a transfer of power, studies of decolonizing processes after political independence remain overwhelmingly on those in power: focused on states and the political elites who helmed them (and who shaped consequent historical narratives). In turn, anticolonial activists who were marginalized during the end of empires often have been expunged from the record. Yet these critics continued to organize, serving as challengers to emerging (inter)national norms. For groups excluded from or contesting state power, decolonization increasingly came to mean dissent: mobilizing to oppose and reshape state practices, governing norms, and notions of belonging.

Through the life of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, one such dissident with legacies across Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India, this talk offers an alternative reading of decolonization to problematize categories central to international relations and to rethink the pursuit of independence as a simultaneously local and universal, individual and collective, phenomenon.

The Speaker

Dr Elisabeth Leake (Tufts University) is an Associate Professor of History, Arts and Sciences

About the Lecture

The Lecture will be followed by a wine reception. All are welcome but please sign up  on the Eventbrite web page.

The event is organised by the Raphael Samuel History Centre, a partnership between Birkbeck, University of London and the School of History at Queen Mary University of London, and supported by the IHSS Visiting Fellowship scheme.

For more information please contact Katy at the Raphael Samuel History Centre (k.pettit@bbk.ac.uk)

Travel Information

The venue, Graduate Centre, is marked 18 on the Mile End campus map. For more travel information, visit the Mile End campus web page.

Image: Poster for the ICFTU-run Asian Trade Union College in Calcutta. International Institute for Social History, ICFTU Archives, BG E4/376.

 

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