Black History Month 2022

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February 2022 will be the first Black History Month (BHM) at the EUI.

What is Black History Month?

Born in 1970 in the US in the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement, Black History Month was conceived as a way of remembering Black people’s contributions to the history of the nation. Nowadays, while BHM is widely celebrated (but also commercialised) in the US and the UK, it remains marginal in continental Europe. However, in 2016 local artists and scholars in Florence founded Black History Month Florence (BHMF), a cross-institutional network for Black cultural production that promotes the diversity of Afro-descendent cultures in the context of Italy.

BHMF

Logo of BHMF

Why Black History Month at the EUI?

The celebration of BHM at the EUI is an initiative that comes from researchers of African descent who believe in the need to make Black European history visible, to stimulate a reflection on the notion of race and to address the structural imbalances that continue to shape the experience of Black people in Europe. At the EUI, the Diversity Committee was created and a Dean for Equality, Diversity and Inclusiveness was appointed in September 2021. On the research front, a research cluster on ‘Eurocentricism’ was also recently established in addition to the (bottom-up) Decolonising Initiative, which aims to create a space for reflections on academic practices and to trigger institutional changes. This anti-racist initiative brings together researchers, fellows, professors, academic staff, and teachers from the language centre willing to reflect on knowledge production and to address structural imbalances that are rooted in colonial pasts.

What’s on

This year the EUI researchers collaborated with the EUI Library, the central Communication Service, and other members of the EUI academic community to organise several initiatives.