British Black Studies has been profoundly shaped by African and Caribbean histories, reflecting the enduring legacies of British imperialism and anti-racist political struggle. No doubt. While these histories remain foundational, Black diasporic life in Britain exceeds the frameworks through which Black presence has often been understood. This lecture engages with British Black Studies by asking what becomes obscured when Blackness in Britain is narrated exclusively through African and Caribbean origins? How even anti-racist and academic frameworks can reproduce forms of erasure when Blackness is treated as static, nationally bounded, or institutionally pre-defined? And how opacity can be useful to affirm Blackness amidst dynamics of coloniality in a postcolonial setting?
Rather than displacing African and Caribbean histories, the lecture argues for an expanded understanding of Black diaspora as an evolving, multifarious formation shaped by colonial afterlives, forced and voluntary migrations, and interconnected struggles across Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. In doing so, it insists that Black Studies must remain attentive to the changing contours of Black presence in Britain today.
Biography: Katucha Bento is a Black Brazilian woman, educator, creative writer, poet, Black queer feminist, antiracist disruptor, decolonial activist, auntie, PhD in sociology and social policy, and a vegan foodie. Currently, she serves as a Senior Lecturer in Race and Decolonial Studies and Chaplain in Candomblé at the University of Edinburgh (UoE). She is also the co-founder of the Free Afro-Brazilian University (UNAFRO), a third sector collective to offer accessible education to all people as part of reparative justice. Her work is dedicated in discussing Black diasporic experiences and interlocking oppressions involving the lives and routes towards liberation, radical love and how affect circulates, topics she discusses in her upcoming book “Intersectionality in (post)colonial Britain: Weaving affect with Black diaspora” (Palgrave, 2026).
