In this very personal reflection, Hifsa explores what it means to belong as a British Muslim in contemporary Britain. Reflecting on over sixty years of lived experience as the child of immigrants, she addresses the complexities of identity, the need for true inclusion, and the importance of genuine representation. She speaks candidly about rising Islamophobia, the manipulation of narratives by far-right groups, and the toll of hate-fuelled violence on Muslim communities. Yet, she also celebrates the achievements of British Muslims, from Mo Farah to Nadiya Hussain, as proof of contribution and commitment to this nation. Her message is clear: belonging is not about conformity—it’s about recognition, respect, and the right to shape the future as equal citizens.

What did it mean for a woman to belong to the early modern Stationers' Company? What did belonging look like for women in the book trades? And what did it mean for a business or a particular book to belong to a woman? In this paper, I will demonstrate women's centrality to the making of books in the early modern period, exploring what underutilised sources have to tell us about women's roles, and how these sources have been explored in scholarship and fiction to shed new light on questions of gender, race and identity. 

The world-renowned Viking Dig at Coppergate in the 1970s opened a window into the history of Viking Age York. Known as the Coppergate woman, one individual buried here provides an intriguing glimpse into the past and opens up possibilities for historians to understand the life of Scandinavian migrants in York. In this paper, I am attempting to reconstruct the life of this particular individual. Setting osteological studies, alongside the historical context of the period and theories of migration, the attempt here is to try to understand how this individual lived and what that life might tell us about the society of which she was a part.

After the dissolution of the monasteries, English women like Winefrid Thimelby who wanted to become nuns first had to become criminals, and exile themselves from their homeland where the practice of their faith, Roman Catholicism, was illegal. Between 1600 and 1800 over 4000 women made the treacherous journey across the English Channel to join one of the new foundations established throughout continental Europe. Until recently, very little was known about these individuals. They were marginalised in European society and by the Catholic Church due to their status as women.

Through portrait photography and interviews, the art and research project documents the experiences of Afghan interpreters who were employed by the British Army in Afghanistan, who were evacuated to the UK following the Taliban take-over of Afghanistan in 2021. The project centres Afghan interpreters’ own stories and invites the viewers to engage with the individuals, their families, and the human stories behind the headlines.

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The project's title 'We Are Here, Because You Were There' references the long lineage of postcolonial migrants to the UK and captures the relationship between migration, (neo-)imperialism, violence and exploitation.

How can we renew our democracies amidst well-documented  processes of “democratic backsliding”, “authoritarianisation”, and “populism”?  Imaginations of democratic renewal are becoming a focal point for struggles against autocracies and authoritarianism, often spearheaded by members of marginalised communities. In conceptualising ‘imagination’, I draw upon social science research work on hope which alerts us to how one might conceptualise political action beyond the binaries of oppression and resistance. This talk will draw on insights from comparative research on the ways in which marginalised communities in the global South are asserting their political agency to imagine democratic renewal, from which we in the global North can learn a great deal.

This paper will foreground the astrolabe, a medieval instrument with roots in Greek astronomy that developed in the premodern Islamic world, and explore how this object, which fascinated the fourteenth-century English writer Geoffrey Chaucer, can connect contemporary and medieval Britain with al-Andalus, Cairo, and Baghdad.  

Between 1837 and 1920, 1.3 million Indians migrated to plantation colonies in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean. Destined to sugar plantations as contractual or indentured labourers, they replaced enslaved workers in the empire’s plantations. This paper explores the life of Bibee Zuhoorun – a female labourer who migrated from eastern India to Mauritius in the 1830s. As the earliest voice of female indentured labourers, Zuhoorun’s presence in the colonial archive offers a rare insight into early indenture migration, painting a story of deception, ill-treatment and injustice. This paper uses Zuhoorun’s testimony to investigate themes of difference, resilience and belonging on colonial plantations.