Black Atlantic: power, people, resistance

Join Jake Subryan Richards and Professor Victoria Avery as they discuss the research and creative process behind the award-winning Black Atlantic exhibition which will be coming to LSE in October.

The exhibition, which was first shown at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, reveals the stories that have been silenced from history, not just stories of exploitation, but those of resilience and liberation, too. It shows how through resisting colonial slavery, people produced new cultures known as the Black Atlantic, that continue to shape our world.

Meet our speakers and chair

Victoria Avery has been Professor of European Sculpture, University of Cambridge, since 2024, and the Fitzwilliam Museum’s Keeper of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, since 2010, prior to which she was Associate Professor in the Department of Art History, University of Warwick. In addition to her research interests in the making, meanings and materialities of European sculpture and applied arts, Vicky has led the Museum’s Legacies-themed exhibition programme to date. She was Lead Curator of Rise Up: Resistance, Revolution, Abolition (21 February–1 June 2025) and Co-Curator of Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance (8 September 2023–7 January 2024). She is an active member of the University’s Legacies of Enslavement Network and has spearheaded new research into the presence of Black Georgians and Victorians in Cambridge, focussing on abolitionist Olaudah Equiano and virtuoso violinist George Bridgtower. Her co-edited volume in the Proceedings of the British Academy series, The Pineapple from Domestication to Commodification, has just been published by LUP.

Jake Subryan Richards is a historian of the Atlantic world and global history, with interests in legal history, the history of empires, and the African diaspora. His first book, The Bonds of Freedom: Liberated Africans and the End of the Slave Trade, provides a new history of slave-trade suppression. The book tells the story of people “liberated” from slaving ships by maritime patrols and then forced into bonded labour by various empires. Richards has published articles in Past and Present, Comparative Studies in Society and History, and Modern Intellectual History. He is a BBC Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker.

Maël Lavenaire is a historian who specializes in a new perspective on Caribbean social history based on a comparative analysis between former British and French colonies. His study enlightens the legacies of colonial slavery and its long-term incidences on the economic and social structures as well as the structuring of racial inequalities that characterize this region from the abolition of slavery to the present time. His current research project focuses on a newly comparative analysis including Jamaica, Guadeloupe, and Martinique from the mid-19th century to the end of the 20th century.

More about this event

This event celebrates the exhibition, Black Atlantic: power, people, resistance, which will be on display at LSE this October for Black History Month.

Dr Richards will be speaking about his new book at a public event on 14 October.

Hashtag for this event: #LSEEvents

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