'Small Talk': A Public Conversation with Stefano Harney

For this event in the ‘Small Talk: On the Corners of London & Paris’ series, part of the 2026 Banister Fletcher Global Fellowship , we are delighted to be welcoming Stefano Harney.

Harney is a thinker and writer whose work arises from the situations that working- class peoples of all colours find themselves inhabiting. Thinking in and writing about places of leisure (bars, clubs, carnivals) , work (factories, schools, universities, post offices) and community (churches, family barbecues and street-corners), he has used the dynamics of life in such situations to explore how working-class people of colour have used their own modes of social organisation to create meaning. This work has provided the foundation for books such as Nationalism and Identity: Culture and Imagination in a Caribbean Diaspora (University of West Indies, 2006), State Work: Public Administration and Mass Intellectuality (Duke University Press, 2006), and, with Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (Minor Compositions, 2013) and, All Incomplete (Minor Compositions, 2021).

Our public conversation will be taking place at Le Shakirail, an alternative space created by the collective Curry Vavart in 2011 in disused railway facilities. Le Shakirail provides affordable studio and workspace, including a workshops for wood, clay, electronics and moulding. It also runs a community kitchen. The talk will be proceeded by a collective meal.

Places will be limited. Please reserve.

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Host or Publisher University of London Institute in Paris