For the 2024 Autumn Keynote, the Stuart Hall Foundation invited historian and writer Professor Robin D. G. Kelley to respond to the theme of our Catastrophe and Emergence programme. The hybrid event took place at Conway Hall, London, as well as online. Professor Kelley’s keynote was organised around reflections on anniversaries marking key moments of Catastrophe and Emergence. Tracing the colonial dialectic and the many different chapters and phases of resistance to it, his keynote framed resistance – ever in motion, ever in a state of emergence – within the current conjuncture. “Abolition and revolution are not the same thing,” he noted. “The meanings of abolition and revolution are both contested. But I would argue today’s abolitionists are revolutionaries.” Abolition continued to be a focus of the discussion between Professor Kelley and interdisciplinary writer, artist, editor and curator Imani Mason Jordan following the keynote. The event concluded with an audience Q&A, and Newham Bookshop held a stall with literature on sale. Read a transcript of the event here: https://www.stuarthallfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Autumn-Keynote-2024-Transcript.pdf In partnership with Conway Hall Ethical Society supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust, Cockayne Grants for the Arts, a donor-advised fund held at the London Community Foundation, and Words of Colour. Part of the Stuart Hall Foundation’s Catastrophe and Emergence programme. Learn more about Catastrophe and Emergence here: https://www.stuarthallfoundation.org/projects/catastrophe-and-emergence/

The Stuart Hall Foundation’s Reading the Crisis series asks: what kinds of tools and strategies are needed to address this conjuncture? This online conversation series seeks to advance Stuart Hall’s thinking by analysing a curated selection of three of Hall’s essays in relation to present-day political formations. Each conversation, chaired by Aasiya Lodhi, forms an online teach-in space dedicated to demonstrating how engaging in a conjunctural analysis can enrich artistic practice, deepen organising work, and academic study.

The third event in the series took place on Tuesday 23rd July 2024, featuring Gail Lewis and Roderick Ferguson responding to Stuart Hall’s 1990 essay ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’.

Read a transcript of the event here:
https://www.stuarthallfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/RTC-Episode-3-Transcript.pdf

In partnership with Duke University Press supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust.

Reading the Crisis is part of the Stuart Hall Foundation’s Catastrophe and Emergence programme. Learn more about Catastrophe and Emergence here:
https://www.stuarthallfoundation.org/projects/catastrophe-and-emergence/

For this year’s Autumn Keynote, the Stuart Hall Foundation invited internationally renowned historian and writer Professor Robin D. G. Kelley to respond to the theme of our Catastrophe and Emergence programme. The event took place on Thursday 5th September at Conway Hall, London, as well as online.

Professor Kelley’s keynote was organised around reflections on anniversaries marking key moments of Catastrophe and Emergence. Tracing the colonial dialectic and the many different chapters and phases of resistance to it, his keynote framed resistance – ever in motion, ever in a state of emergence – within the current conjuncture. “Abolition and revolution are not the same thing,” he noted. “The meanings of abolition and revolution are both contested. But I would argue today’s abolitionists are revolutionaries.”

Abolition continued to be a focus of the discussion between Professor Kelley and interdisciplinary writer, artist, editor and curator Imani Mason Jordan as the pair sat in conversation following the keynote. An audience Q&A also took place, and Newham Bookshop held a stall with literature on sale.

In partnership with Conway Hall Ethical Society supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust, Cockayne Grants for the Arts, a donor-advised fund held at the London Community Foundation, and Words of Colour.

The Stuart Hall Foundation’s Reading the Crisis series asks: what kinds of tools and strategies are needed to address this conjuncture? This online conversation series seeks to advance Stuart Hall’s thinking by analysing a curated selection of three of Hall’s essays in relation to present-day political formations. Each conversation, chaired by Aasiya Lodhi, forms an online teach-in space dedicated to demonstrating how engaging in a conjunctural analysis can enrich artistic practice, deepen organising work, and academic study.

The second event in the series took place on Monday 24th June 2024, featuring Aditya Chakrabortty and Jeremy Gilbert responding to Stuart Hall’s 2011 essay ‘The Neoliberal Revolution’ in order to better understand today’s political milieu.

Read a transcript of the event here:
https://www.stuarthallfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/RTC-Episode-2-Transcript.pdf

Coming up in the Reading the Crisis series:
23rd July – Cultural Identity and Diaspora
Learn more: https://www.stuarthallfoundation.org/events/

In partnership with Duke University Press supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust.

Reading the Crisis is part of the Stuart Hall Foundation’s Catastrophe and Emergence programme. Learn more about Catastrophe and Emergence here:
https://www.stuarthallfoundation.org/projects/catastrophe-and-emergence/

The Stuart Hall Foundation’s Reading the Crisis series asks: what kinds of tools and strategies are needed to address this conjuncture? This online conversation series seeks to advance Stuart Hall’s thinking by analysing a curated selection of three of Hall’s essays in relation to present-day political formations. Each conversation, chaired by Aasiya Lodhi, forms an online teach-in space dedicated to demonstrating how engaging in a conjunctural analysis can enrich artistic practice, deepen organising work, and academic study.

The first event in the series took place on Tuesday 7th May 2024, featuring Ilan Pappé and Priyamvada Gopal responding to Stuart Hall’s 1992 essay ‘The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power’ as a means of making sense of the conflicts of today.

Read a transcript of the event here:
https://www.stuarthallfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/RTC-Episode-1-Transcript.pdf

Coming up in the Reading the Crisis series:
24th June – The Neoliberal Revolution
23rd July – Cultural Identity and Diaspora
Learn more: https://www.stuarthallfoundation.org/events/

In partnership with Duke University Press supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust.

Reading the Crisis is part of the Stuart Hall Foundation’s Catastrophe and Emergence programme. Learn more about Catastrophe and Emergence here:
https://www.stuarthallfoundation.org/projects/catastrophe-and-emergence/

For the 7th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation, the Stuart Hall Foundation welcomed acclaimed filmmaker and installation artist Isaac Julien. The event took place on Saturday 23rd March 2024 at Conway Hall, London, inaugurating our Catastrophe and Emergence programme.

Isaac’s keynote presentation explored the connection between image-making and political allegory. He drew upon his conversations with Stuart Hall over the years to reflect on how ideas, language and narratives can transform within a visual frame, presenting new modes of the imaginary. “Stuart’s double position,” Isaac reflected, “eagerly greeting this new wave of left-wing thought but subjecting it to rigorous critique, was instrumental in helping me form my own path through the stories that my research turned up.”

The event also included a new, two-screen presentation of Isaac Julien’s immersive installation, Once Again… (Statues Never Die). Tapping into his extensive research in the archives of the Barnes Foundation, Isaac’s film considers the reciprocal impact of Alain Locke’s political philosophy and cultural organising activities, and Albert C. Barnes’ pioneering art collecting and democratic, inclusive educational enterprise. This was the first time the piece was shown in this format in the UK. Following the screening, Isaac was joined in conversation with Gilane Tawadros, Chair of the Stuart Hall Foundation and Director of the Whitechapel Gallery. An audience Q&A also took place, and Newham Bookshop provided a stall for attendees to browse from.

Additionally, the inaugural Stuart Hall Essay Prize was awarded to its first winner, Hashem Abushama, for the essay “a map without guarantees: Stuart Hall and Palestinian geographies”. Trustee and judging panel member Catherine Hall presented the award to Hashem, whose acceptance speech provided additional valuable context to the essay’s creation and content.

In partnership with Conway Hall supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust and Cockayne Grants for the Arts, a donor-advised fund held at The London Community Foundation.

The Stuart Hall Foundation welcomed renowned public intellectual Jacqueline Rose for our 6th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation at Conway Hall, London, on Saturday 11th February 2023. She delivered a lecture entitled ‘What is a Subject? Politics and Psyche After Stuart Hall’. Stuart Hall’s work can be read as a perpetual searching, however difficult or painful, for the linchpins which entangle intimate personal history to global political relations. It’s through this approach to reading Hall that Rose began to realise how deeply embedded his work was within psychoanalytical thought. In this lecture, Rose tracks the key aspects of Hall’s thinking, and questions how, through its prism, he might have reached out to some of the most anguished political and cultural realities of our current times. Following Rose’s keynote and a brief intermission, she is joined by psychotherapist Sharon Numa in conversation. Jacqueline Rose recently adapted this lecture into an essay on Stuart Hall at The New York Review. Read it here: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2023/09/21/the-analyst-stuart-hall-jacqueline-rose/

The Stuart Hall Foundation welcomed renowned public intellectual Jacqueline Rose for our 6th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation at Conway Hall, London, on Saturday 11th February 2023. She delivered a lecture entitled ‘What is a Subject? Politics and Psyche After Stuart Hall’. Stuart Hall’s work can be read as a perpetual searching, however difficult or painful, for the linchpins which entangle intimate personal history to global political relations. It’s through this approach to reading Hall that Rose began to realise how deeply embedded his work was within psychoanalytical thought. In this lecture, Rose tracked the key aspects of Hall’s thinking, and questioned how, through its prism, he might have reached out to some of the most anguished political and cultural realities of our current times. Following Rose’s keynote and a brief intermission, she joined psychotherapist Sharon Numa in conversation. Watch a recording of the event here.