Here at the Stuart Hall Archive Project we have embarked upon a collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University. This summer we have been thrilled to welcome three PhD Visiting Fellows, who have been conducting research at the archive.
Rukimani PV is a third-year PhD student in the Program of Literature & Critical Theory at Duke University. Their research, broadly speaking, is interested in blackness and surveillance within the technological gaze, the entanglements between whiteness, capitalism, and colonialism in relation to the South Asian diaspora, necropolitics, and border studies. In supplement to this work, they are a computer scientist and ultimately aim to use theory as an epistemology to build decolonial technologies of resistance.
Within the Stuart Hall Archive, Rukimani’s project focuses on Hall’s work on political blackness, multiculturalism, and diaspora/identity. They are particularly interested in the notion of blackness within the South Asian Diaspora, and examining the collaborations (and tensions) between Black and Asian communities within the British Black Arts Movement, political organizing, anti-racism campaigns, as well as high-profile media cases like the murder of Stephen Lawrence. Ultimately, their project examines Hall’s position as a scholar, activist, artist, and theorist in shaping these dialogues and movements through an examination of Hall’s contribution to the infamous Macpherson report, Ten.8 magazine, partnerships with (politically) Black British artists, including Sunil Gupta, Sunil Janah, and Sutapa Biswas, and communications with multiculturalists Tariq Modood and Bhiku Parekh.