Migration History Seminar Series 2024/25 Multicultural Britain: A People’s History Research and knowledge exchange

In this book talk, Kieran Connell explores Britain’s transition into the multicultural society it has become today. He focuses on the experience of increasing ethnic diversity – multiculturalism as it “actually existed” on Britain’s streets and its youth clubs, pubs, places of work, cafés and school playgrounds.

The making of multicultural Britain, Connell argues, has been conditioned by the coming together of competing forces. On the one hand, the stubborn presence of racism in myriad forms, including the willingness of both major political parties to legitimize discrimination for their own short term political gain. On the other hand, however, in parallel to this the second half of the twentieth century also witnessed the arrival of unprecedented ethnic diversity, in new geographies and communities, art forms, modes of politics and in everyday relationships. Britain’s multicultural “drift”, as Stuart Hall has described it, has inserted itself into the very heart of the social and cultural landscapes of modern Britain. As this dialectical process continues apace, Connell argues, the very concept of “Britishness” cannot be what it was before.

Dr Kieran Connell is a social and cultural historian of modern Britain and Reader in History at Queen's University Belfast. His research interests include the New Left, cultural studies, urban history, race, immigration and multiculturalism. He has published on these areas in Social History, History Workshop Journal, Patterns of Prejudice, Twentieth Century British History and other academic journals. He is the co-editor of Cultural Studies 50 Years On (2016) and his first monograph - Black Handsworth: race in 1980s Britain - was published by the University of California Press in 2019 and shortlisted for the Whitfield Prize. He has curated several public exhibitions, including Janet Mendelsohn: Varna Road at the Ikon Gallery in 2016, and has held visiting fellowships at New York University and Stanford University.  His research has been supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Fulbright Commission and, most recently, the British Academy.

His new book, Multicultural Britain: A People's History was published by Hurst in August 2024.