BECOMINGS Launch Seminar: Temporalities, Solidarities and Social Class in Antiracism

Name: BECOMINGS Launch Seminar: Temporalities, Solidarities and Social Class in Antiracism
Start: 2025-10-27T13:00:00+02:00
End: 2025-10-27T17:00:00+02:00
Location: Helsingin Yliopiston päärakennus

Schedule

Mon Oct 27 2025 at 01:00 pm to 05:00 pm

UTC+02:00

Location

Helsingin Yliopiston päärakennus | Helsinki, ES

We are pleased to invite you to the launch seminar of the research project Becomings: Temporalities, Solidarities and Social Class in Antiracism, located at the Centre for Research on Ethnic Relations and Nationalism (CEREN) at the University of Helsinki (Becomings, Research Council of Finland, 2025-2028).
Date & Time: 27.10.2025 at 13.00-17.00
Venue: Studium I (F3020), Main Building, 3rd floor, Fabianinkatu 33. University of Helsinki and online
Register for event: https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/136762/lomake.html
The seminar invites scholars, activists and organizers to discuss, and reflect on, themes of solidarity and antiracist coalition-building across global and local mobilisations.
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Programme:
13:00-13:15 Introduction and welcoming words
13:15-14:15 Keynote lecture by prof. Bhattacharyya
14:15-15:00 Presentation of the Becomings-project
15:00-15:15 Break
15:30-16:30 Panel discussion on political solidarities with Eugene Ufoka, Sera Heikkilä, Pazilaiti Simayijiang and Majed Abusalama
16:30-17:00 Closing and final remarks

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Keynote by Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya (University College London): “One eye on the horizon and one eye on the street - building power in a world we did not choose”
What should we do? Attend to the immediate needs and attacks all around us? Keep our political imaginations looking forwards towards the horizon? As we become, sometimes despite ourselves, the political subjects made through this period of accelerated degradation and dispossession, what might it mean to look in both directions at once?
This talk is an experiment in giving space to both directions. Although we are practised in thinking of political life as a series of interconnected scales, here I try to think of simultaneous spheres that may not be connected in any easily discernible way. I say this not to encourage the audience to revivify some or other form of totality – that is a trite game for us. Instead, let us practice thinking of simultaneous and separate spheres even if we do not truly believe in this separation. What might be unleashed through this particular experiment?
Gargi Bhattacharyya is Professor and Director of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation at University College London. They have published widely in the fields of racism, globalisation, militarism, racial capitalism, including the books: Dangerous Brown Men (Zed, 2008), Crisis, Austerity and Everyday Life (Palgrave, 2015), Rethinking Racial Capitalism (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018), Empire's Endgame (Pluto, 2021) and The Futures of Racial Capitalism (Polity, 2023). They live in London with their children.
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Panelists:
Majed Abusalama is a prominent political activist and PhD researcher at the University of Tampere, who grew up in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza. He currently serves as the president of Sumud Finland and the Coalition of Lawyers for Palestine in Switzerland. Abusalama is also the co-founder of Palestine Speaks in Germany and has been actively involved in the BDS movement, refugee rights, and anti-fascist/antiracist struggles for over two decades.
Sera Heikkilä is the chairperson of Fem-R, an antiracist and intersectional feminist civil organization that advocates and builds community with and for racialized minorities in Finland. She has been active in a variety of civil organizations for the past 15 years and is currently getting their master’s degree in sociology at the University of Helsinki.
Pazilaiti Simayijiang is a student, activist and advocate based in Finland. As an Uyghur and the eldest daughter, she is heavily guided by collective memory, cultural preservation and a sense of shared responsibility. Her activism focuses on the Uyghur genocide and anti-racism in Finland. In her academic and literary work, she explores belonging, resistance, collective memory and home. She is also a bassist in a rock band.
Eugene Ufoka is an anti-racist, decolonial activist, entrepreneur community organiser, human rights activist, and a chairperson of African Anti Racism Society Finland (AFARS).

The seminar is organized by Professor Suvi Keskinen (project leader), Dr. Ali Ali, Dr. Ameera Masoud-Jaakonaho, and Doctoral Researcher Emma Grillo Kajava.
We hope to meet you at the kick-off seminar!