Join the University of Oxford’s Black History Month Lecture -"The Iconicity of Africa" - with Professor Adom Getachew.

Professor Adom Getachew will explore how, over the course of the 20th century, the continental image of Africa emerged as a symbolically freighted icon for a political project centred on racial solidarity and emancipation. The lecture will trace this development and consider the multiplicity of meanings that have come to cohere around the sign of Africa.

The University of Oxford’s Black History Month Lecture 2026 is presented in partnership by the BME Staff Network, Nuffield College and the Equality and Diversity Unit.

The event is open to all members of the University and members of the public.

About the speaker

Adom Getachew is Chair of Race, Diaspora & Indigeneity and Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (2019) and co-editor, with Jennifer Pitts, of W. E. B. Du Bois: International Thought (2022).

As part of a four-member curatorial team, she curated the exhibition Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica and co-edited the accompanying catalogue. Currently, Professor Getacher is working on a second book on the intellectual origins and political practices of Garveyism.

Her public writing has appeared in Boston Review, Dissent, Foreign Affairs, the London Review of Books, The Nation, the New York Review of Books and the New York Times.

Event timings

Doors will open at 5pm. Please take your seats by 5:20pm as the lecture will start promptly at 5:30pm.

The schedule will be confirmed shortly.

There are no allocated seats at this event.

Spaces are limited, you are encouraged to register early.

Location

The lecture will be held in the Humanities Theatre (sign-posted as 'Theatre') of the Schwarzman Centre.

Accessibility

Information about venue accessibility features is available in the Schwarzman Centre page of the University Access Guide (https://www.ox.ac.uk/about/how-we-are-run/equality-diversity/access-guide/academic-depts/schwarzman-centre-for-the-humanities). If you have any access requirements that we can support you with, please let us know when booking or contact equality@admin.ox.ac.uk.

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