In September 2024, we were pleased to meet new members joining the SHF Scholars, Fellows and Artists Network in person at a welcome event. We hosted this event, chaired by the Chair of the SHF Academic Committee, Professor Nasar Meer, with the aim to develop connections between the Foundation and the new members of its network, giving attendees the opportunity make each others’ acquaintance and share ideas directly. Attendees were invited to introduce their research, consider Stuart Hall’s thoughts on being a public intellectual, and learn about the Foundation’s programme of events, workshops, opportunities and support available to them.

Following a breakout session responding to clips from Hall’s lecture ‘Through the Prism of an Intellectual Life’, participants were joined by historian and writer Professor Robin D. G. Kelley for an informal group discussion, introduced by Professor Catherine Hall. Later, writer and researcher Lola Olufemi delivered a talk followed by a conversation with photographer, media artist and scholar Professor Roshini Kempadoo and the group, exploring Lola’s experience as a scholar and a member of the SHF Network.

Thank you to the SHF Trustees and Associates whose contributions made this event possible: Giorgia Doná, Catherine Hall, Roshini Kempadoo, Nasar Meer, Shamim Miah and Ruth Ramsden-Karelse.

Our 2025 SHF Peer Network Welcome Event took place on Friday 17th October, inviting new scholars, fellows and artists joining the network to congregate at Whitechapel Gallery, London, and develop connections with the Foundation and each other. Attendees introduced their research, field of study or practice, reflected on excerpts from Stuart Hall’s lecture ‘Through the Prism of an Intellectual Life’, visited Whitechapel Gallery’s retrospective on Joy Gregory before meeting the visual artist and participated in an introductory session of the SHF Forum.

Feven Cofré Eyob, a PhD scholar supported by an SHF CHASE DTP studentship at SOAS, shares reflections on her experience attending the event below.

Bustling into the Whitechapel Gallery on that bright October morning with my trusted trio – a backpack, pushchair, and my baby – I half expected to be met with polite tolerance at my hefty load. There is, after all, quite a difference between being cordially invited as an academic and the deeper, rarer feeling of being genuinely welcomed into a fold, as both mother and researcher. To my delight, what awaited me felt like a homecoming. Each greeting came with warm introductions that flowed effortlessly into bubbling conversations.

This hum of conviviality set a purposeful undertone that carried us throughout the day. With the program of lectures and presentations, our earlier introductions percolated into reflections on what home means. How do we become at home without being at home? What might it mean to be “in but not of” the institutions in which we work? By the end of our meeting, I felt reassured in our camaraderie. All of us in the room were interested in questions of how to navigate being unsettled by unjust systems, by structures so vast they defy comprehension, and yet strive to still find something generative in our attempts to unpack their formations. As Stuart Hall conveyed to us from the archives: we may never speak the truth, but can commit to the ongoing task of seeking our best truths.

As these themes and ideas moved through our dialogues, we found ourselves deepening our engagement through reflections on Joy Gregory’s brilliant exhibition Catching Flies with Honey, as well as considering what an intellectual life means. Looking around the room, among peers who already felt familiar, I sensed a quiet cultivation of kinship – in our ideas, responses, and research praxis. Our shared academic genealogy became visible in our gathering and in our collective musings on the concepts articulated by our academic ancestor, Stuart Hall.

From far behind the veil, reverberating through the archives and coursing through the minds and hearts of the people in that room above the Whitechapel Gallery, Stuart Hall taught us about finding our way, about overcoming disillusionment and dislocation on our scholarly path and, in doing so, reassured us. That this journey need not be a burden, but an empowering trajectory: one that honours our mission, infuses us with purpose as we serve our communities, and invites us to find joy in the constellation of academic kinship that was fostered that day.

– Feven Cofré Eyob, November 2025

Writer, researcher, member of the Stuart Hall Foundation Peer Network and a speaker in this year’s In Search of Common Ground programme, Dr. Lola Olufemi shares insights and reflections on her experience participating in the Reading the Crisis conversation series.

I found the format of the Reading the Crisis series particularly generative – thinking about the present conjuncture through the threads left by an intellectual exchange between CLR James and Stuart Hall emphasised the importance of public dialogue as a means of combatting the anti-intellectualism of our increasingly fascist present. We must emphasise the connectivity of radical thinking across forms and arenas in order to reinvigorate the process of interpretative struggle that creates a culture. The dialogue allowed me to consider the creation of new strategies for attending to the present – particularly Houria’s insistence that notion of Gramsci’s notion of the ‘Integral State’, the relationship between the state and civil society as it operates in Europe is racialised and that this integral racial state “however tentacular, does not exhaust either the human being or their capacity to break the chains and enjoy their freedom.” Our conversation illuminated the responsibility of cultural workers, public intellectuals and academics to address the persistence of race as an ordering principle, a “floating signifier”, and the beating heart of the fascist project which is expressed through “common sense” objections to forms of migration in the United Kingdom. It also highlighted the affective dimensions of political education – if we can move people towards political consciousness, actions, affiliations and relationships which reject the myopic and alienated existence we have inherited from the neoliberal project of the last two decades through cultural interventions like this, we should not hesitate to do so. This is one part of a multi-pronged strategy.

I am always thinking about how we gain deeper understanding of the political legacies to which they belong and work in service to extend them in new ways. The necessity of making connections across time cannot be understated. My conversation with Houria made me realise that the exchange between CLR James and Stuart was not an archival relic, locked into the domain of the past; the insights they shared were pertinent to the present moment and were rearticulated in our conversation through a feminist lens. It reminded me of what I already know: we may live under different conditions but the political project remains the same.

– Lola Olufemi, September 2025

On Friday 27th October 2025, we invited new scholars, fellows and artists joining the SHF Peer Network to gather at Whitechapel Gallery, London, for our 2025 Welcome Event. This was an opportunity to develop connections between the new members and the Foundation, providing a space to meet and exchange ideas in person. Attendees were invited to introduce their research, area of study or practice, consider Stuart Hall’s thoughts on what it means to be a public intellectual, and learn more about the Foundation’s programme of events, workshops and opportunities available to them through the Peer Network.

Following the screening of clips from Hall’s lecture ‘Through the Prism of an Intellectual Life’, introduced by SHF Trustee Nick Beech, attendees participated in breakout and group conversations on what “an intellectual life” means to them and how it relates to their own pursuits.

The new Peer Network members were also invited to visit the Whitechapel Gallery’s retrospective on visual artist Joy Gregory, Catching Flies with Honey, which SHF Associate Roshini Kempadoo led a group discussion around afterwards. Later in the day, Joy Gregory met with attendees to share insights on her practice too.

In the afternoon, SHF Associate and Peer Network member Ruth Ramsden-Karelse hosted an introductory session to the SHF Forum, a regular online forum where the network collectively engages with wider social, cultural and political issues. A space for Peers to think with one another beyond their disciplines and institutional settings, this ad hoc in-person session invited discussions on what our political investments and aims are, in relation to the work that we do.

Thank you to the SHF Trustees and Associates whose contributions made this event possible: Nick Beech, Giorgia Doná, Roshini Kempadoo, Michael Rustin and Ruth Ramsden-Karelse.