News

Magdalene College invites undergraduate students at the University to submit entries for the annual Peter Peckard Memorial Prize.Brief: Submit an essay or equivalent piece of work examining an egregious form of human exploitation in the world today and the actions needed to eliminate it.Closing date: 10 July 2026More information is available on the…

The Fitzwilliam Museum’s Bound Together: Leather From Northern Nigeria display closed in February after extensive engagement, including curator‑led tours and hands‑on workshops with historic Nigerian goatskins. The project highlighted African expertise, craft traditions, and collaborative research on West African collections, offering rich insights…

By Dr Lamin Manneh, Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow (Faculty of History).  This post is part of Exploring Legacies of Enslavement: a research series, highlighting ongoing research on the legacies of enslavement. 

The Cambridge Festival, two weeks of talks, films exhibitions and other events returns this year in sites across the city between 16 March and 2 April.We would like to highlight a number of events that may be of interest to members of the Legacies Network, but the full programme is available on the Festival’s website.On Friday 20 March, Wolfson Col…

A new open-access book challenges Western ideas of comics, showing how the medium can engage with histories of slavery and colonialism while centring Global South voices. Read about “Comics and the Global South: decentring Western narratives” on the Faculty of Education website

The opening event of Celebrating Black Minds, held at the Fitzwilliam Museum on 29 January 2026, marked the launch of a year-long programme dedicated to celebrating and amplifying the intellectual, cultural and civic contributions of Black scholars at the University of Cambridge.The evening brought together students, academics, cultural practitione…

As Black History Month draws to a close in the United States, Scholars Ola Osman and Andrea Loucil reflect on the enduring impact of slavery in the Caribbean and Africa. Read the full article on the Gates Cambridge website. 

By Eleanor Stephenson, PhD candidate in History.This post is part of Exploring Legacies of Enslavement: a research series, highlighting ongoing research on the legacies of enslavement.

The University of Cambridge has transferred legal ownership of 116 Benin artefacts from the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) to Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), operating under a management agreement with the Benin Royal Palace.Read the full story on the University of Cambridge main site.  

Trinity Hall has welcomed Dr Zehra Jumabhoy as the inaugural Berger Trust Future Leaders Fellow, where she will investigate how art and visual culture reveal Britain’s imperial past and its ongoing influence. Read the full announcement on the Trinity Hall website.

The Legacies of Enslavement Special Initiative is pleased to announce two funding opportunities now open to support innovative work that deepens understanding of the histories, legacies and afterlives of enslavement.Research project proposalsExpressions of interest are invited from senior University members for research projects that contribute to …

David Dabydeen, Emeritus Professor of Literature at the University of Warwick and honorary fellow of Selwyn College Cambridge, has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature by a group of scholars. Dabydeen is a poet, writer and historian whose work has for several decades explored the memory and history of slavery and indentureship in his na…

In this blog, Homerton alum Dr Jerome Atutornu, now Senior Lecturer at the School of Health, Science and Society at the University of Suffolk, explores how Black communities remain underrepresented in genomics and argues that research must value community knowledge. Read the full blog on the Homerton College website.

This blog introduces the Sounding Freedom and Liberation podcast, a multidisciplinary series exploring music, freedom and postcolonial experience, including discussions of Afro‑Caribbean histories and abolition songs that appropriated enslaved people’s narratives to support ending the slave trade. Read the full story on the Centre for Research in t…

An online exhibition revisits Tony Phillips’ residency the at Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, where his work not only engages with museum objects and contemporary consumer culture but also interrogates the contested histories of the Benin Bronzes, highlighting the colonial violence behind their looting and the ongoing politics of their disp…