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Building Bridges Conference

Following a call for papers last year, we are delighted to announce that the Building Bridges Conference will take place from the 4 – 7 April 2022. The conference is part of the Formations programme run by researchers from the Postcolonial Study Centre at Nottingham Trent University and Bonington Gallery.

Hosting a wide range of presenters from across the globe, papers explore contemporary topical issues of decolonisation and its socio-political structures. The conference is open to discussions and deconstructions of long-held dominant ideologies and narratives which function to sustain the invisibility of colonial and empirical legacies in the contemporary world. Building Bridges aims to highlight alternative ways of thinking about the world and alternative forms of political practices. By thinking critically about the need to unbuild, to deconstruct, and to destabilise the kind of connections and structures that uphold Eurocentric and colonial frames of reference as ‘universal’, we seek to upend stories of encounter and demonstrate the pervasive influence of conquest narratives in the present day. We are delighted to confirm that our keynote speakers are Professor Avtar Brah and Dr Sophie Chao.

The conference will feature a reading from Leone Ross, from her new novel This One Sky Day. The reading will be followed by a Q&A session with the writer, discussing her writing process and her thoughts on creative form in a postcolonial world. 

Take a look at the full conference programme.

Conference Schedule:
4 April
Welcome and Decolonial Imaginings and Intersectional Conversations and Contestations, Professor Avtar Brah

9.45 – 11 am

This presentation will be a both theoretical and political engagement with concepts such as ‘Decolonial’ and ‘Intersectionality’ and how these concepts assume new meanings through their articulation. It will attend to particular instances in and through which they have mapped the social ground of feminist and egalitarian imaginaries.

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

Panel 1: Gender, the Body, and Oppression

12 – 1.30 pm

Participants: Marietta Kosma, Daniel Yaw Fiaveh, Ndiweteko Jennifer Nghishitende and Lede E Miki Pohshna

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

Panel 2: Identity, Diaspora, and Dispossession

2.30 – 4 pm

Participants: Isabel Arce Zelada, Rajbir Samal & Binod Mishra, Ghosun Baaqeel and Victoria V. Chang

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

5 April
Decolonising the Field(s): Insights from the Pacific in an Age of Planetary Unravelling, Dr Sophie Chao

8.45 – 10 am

In this talk, Dr Chao will draw on her collaborative research with Samoan scholar and Lefaoali’i (High Talking Chief) Dion Enari to explore how transdisciplinary, experimental, and decolonial imaginaries can help us better understand and address environmental destruction and social injustice in an epoch of planetary undoing. Such imaginaries must account for the perspectives, interests, and existences of both human and beyond-human communities of life.

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

Panel 3: Resistance, Representation, and Marginalised Communities

11 am – 12.30 pm

Participants: Shifana P A & Dr Asha Susan Jacob, Md Alamgir Hossain, Bianca Cherechés and Chithira James & Dr Reju George Mathew

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

Panel 4: Environmentalism, Conservation, and Decolonisation

1.30 – 3 pm

Participants: Badakynti Nylla Iangngap, Catherine Price, Dr Md Abu Shahid Abdullah and Swapnit Pradhan & Dr Nagendra Kumar

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

6 April
Panel 5: Decolonial Research, Knowledge(s), and Pedagogy

9.45 – 11.30 am

Participants: Atilio Barreda II, Nabeela Musthafa, Dr Opeloge Ah Sam and Sara Bdeir

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

Panel 6: Modernity, Higher Education, and Epistemology

12.30 – 2 pm

Participants: Shifana P A & Dr Asha Susan Jacob, Md Alamgir Hossain, Bianca Cherechés and Chithira James & Dr Reju George Mathew

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

7 April
Reading: This One Sky Day by Leone Ross

11.15 am – 12.30 pm

Leone Ross will read from her new novel, This One Sky Day, and will talk to Bethan Evans and the audience about her writing process and decolonisation.

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

Panel 7: Storytelling, Narrativisation, and Form

1.30 – 3 pm

Participants: Carolina Buffoli, Marine Berthiot, Dr Rachel Gregory Fox and Dr Yasmin Rioux

Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.

For more information visit the Building Bridges conference website and follow Building Bridges on Twitter.

on Twitter @buildbridgesntu.