Reading the Crisis: Houria Bouteldja & Lola Olufemi

Houria Bouteldja, writer and activist of Algerian origin, was a founder and former member of the Parti des Indigènes de la République (PIR), a decolonial political party based in France, which fights against colonialist and neo-colonialist ideologies and practices, racism and Islamophobia. She participated in the founding of the Les Blédardes collective. She has written numerous strategic theoretical articles on decolonial feminism, racism, autonomy and political alliances, as well as articles on Zionism and state philosemitism.  

She is the author with Sadri Khiari, of Nous sommes les indigènes de la République (Editions Amsterdam, 2012). Her most recent book Beaufs et Barbares: Le pari du nous (Éditions La Fabrique, 2023) was translated into Spanish by Patanes y bárbaros: la apuesta del nosotros (Akal, 2023) and more recently in english, Italian and german. 

Whites, Jews and Us, towards a politics of revolutionary love is her first book translated into Portuguese, English, Spanish, Italian, Greek and Dutch and so far the most recognized of her work, originally published in 2016 by La Fabrique, Les Blancs, les Juifs et nous: Vers une politique de l’amour révolutionnaire. Houria is currently a member of the QG Decolonial.

Dr. Lola Olufemi is a black feminist writer and independent researcher from London. Her work focuses on the uses of the political imagination and its relationship to cultural production, political demands and futurity. She is author of Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power (Pluto Press, 2020), Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (Hajar Press, 2021), the forthcoming Against Literature (2026) and a member of ‘bare minimum’, an interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective. 

Aasiya Lodhi is a Senior Lecturer in Media at the University of Westminster. Her research is focused on empire and twentieth-century British history. She led an AHRC-funded project on gender, race, and visibility tied to the BBC’s centenary, and she is currently writing a book on BBC Radio, racial liberalism, and the politics of voice in post-war Britain. Aasiya is a former BBC radio producer and journalist.