Sofia Akel Reads, Institutionalised

In this event, we’ll hear from Sofia Akel, as she reads from her publication, Institutionalised: The Rise of Islamophobia in Higher Education, at an in person and online interactive session. Following the reading, we’ll begin a short walk through Newcastle, exploring the architectures of the urban environment we encounter with coffee, tea and cakes provided.

Sofia Akel:

• Adidas x Guap Blacklist: 30 Under 30
• Bookseller Rising Star 2022
• London Book Fair Trailblazer Nominee 2021
• MBCC Social Activist Nominee 2021, 2022

Featured In: Channel 4 News, ITV News, The Guardian, GRM Daily, Al-Jazeera English, NBC, Huffington Post, The Strategist (New York Magazine), BBC Radio London, Stylist Magazine, House Magazine & more

Sofia Akel is a cultural historian and producer, researcher, Black British studies lecturer and founder of the non-profit, Free Books Campaign. From leading institutional strategies to tackle systemic racism to research for music videos, podcasts and more, her work spans numerous sectors including the creative, educational, and charitable industries, publishing multiple leading research studies. Her work also includes events hosting, she was recently in-conversation with Hollywood actress Constance Wu, food critic and Master Chef guest judge Jimi Famurewa and Desmond Elliott Prize winner Derek Owusu.

About the reading:

Institutionalised: The Rise of Islamophobia in Higher Education is a comprehensive report that examines the complexities and manifestations of Islamophobia throughout the higher education sector. It seeks to examine the experiences of both Muslim students and staff. The report draws on seminal sector data that allows, for the first time, intersectional analysis across both race and religion. Additionally, shared lived experience forms the heart of the research, centring the voices of Muslims in the sector.The research publication explores the question: To what extent does institutional Islamophobia shape the experiences of Muslim students and university staff.

Race and Space Reading Group: A Critical Walk Series:

'Race and Space' Reading Group is an interdisciplinary project initiated in 2021 by Rima Hussein and Nadia Bertolino at Northumbria University, and supported through the Race Equality Charter Fund and the Enhancement Project Fund.

'Race and Space' aims to provide opportunities to have meaningful and courageous conversations about matters that many of us may find it difficult to talk about. In particular, we draw on the assumption that a spatial discourse can provide a particularly useful lens and language for locating and understanding persistent racial processes (Neely & Samura, 2011, p.1934) and eventually challenging them. ‘Space’ is here intended as a necessarily cross-disciplinary concept: an ever changing, often unbalanced system of social changes, political negotiations and environmental propositions. ‘Space’ is also a tangible expression of power, that establishes or reiterates social and economic inequalities, producing material geographies that are, as a matter of course, ‘racialised’ (Zewolde et al., 2020).

Drawing on Tayob and Hall’s Race, Space and Architecture Open Curriculum (2019), we aim to talk through the spatial implications of capitalism that produce racial injustice and question how ‘race’ is configured differently across space.

Through a curated selection of novels, poems and academic writings, ‘Race and Space’ became a place for subversion and hope, a common ground for practising refusal and act collaboratively.

The session will take place both in person and online. If you wish to attend online, please register via the eventbrite. The Race and Space: A Critical Walk Series team will email you with the joining link.

To see more from the Race and Space: A Critical Walk Series, visit our website at https://www.intersectionalspatialdialogues.co.uk/

Host or Publisher Race and Space Reading Group