Thursday, July 22, 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: “Cartographies of Racial Justice Beyond Borders: Territories of Dispossession and Migration”

Please join us for a virtual keynote lecture with Emma Dabiri, part of the inaugural Migrations Summer Institute. With a focus on mapping race, colonialism, and hair, Dabiri will guide us through the geometries and fractals of African-diaspora braiding and cartography. The institute, “Cartographies of Racial Justice Beyond Borders,” is presented by the Migrations initiative and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, with faculty leaders Tao Leigh Goffe and Shannon Gleeson.

Featuring special guest Emma Dabiri, the keynote will parallel the institute’s theme of “Cartographies of Racial Justice Beyond Borders,” focusing on borders as geopolitical constructs and the intersections of critical race theory, global migration studies, and speculative design.

After you register, you will receive a confirmation e-mail with a link to join the presentation on July 22.

Emma Dabiri is the author of Don’t Touch My Hair (2019) and What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition (2021) and is a regular presenter on BBC and frequent contributor for The Guardian, Irish Times and Vice. She questions the labels she has been given: mixed, Black, Irish, and Nigerian, and critiques categories which reinforce the social construct of race. Her work aims to reframe anti-racism conversations to racial justice and from allyship to solidarity and coalition building. She is critical of mainstream conversations which emphasize interpersonal privilege, diversity, and inclusion. She pushes for readers to take on a class and capitalist analysis of racial justice that will lead us to a real overhaul of our system. Emma Dabiri is currently a teaching fellow in the African Department at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and is pursuing her PhD on the identity politics of mixed-race people at Goldsmiths.

Cornell University’s Migrations Initiative and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies is hosting this inaugural virtual institute, Cartographies of Racial Justice Beyond Borders. With a focus on borders as geopolitical constructs, participants will collectively consider the long history of planetary human migration, the timeline of racial capitalism, and the requisite geographies of dispossession.