People and Planet: Empowering students to rightly facilitate the shift in power – SOAS
“The more we understand what is happening in the world, the more frustrated we often become, for our knowledge leads to feelings of powerlessness. We feel that we are living in a world in which the citizen has become a mere spectator or a forced actor and that our personal experience is politically useless and our political will a minor illusion.”
40 Unanswered Calls Show Us The Grim Reality Of Suicide Helplines In India – Homegrown
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently said, “Unless we act now to address the mental health needs associated with the pandemic, there will be enormous long-term consequences for families, communities and societies.”
How ‘Decolonising Contraception’ is championing the sexual and reproductive rights of People of Colour – SOAS
In 1961, Fannie Lou Harmer, a 44-year-old African-American woman from Mississipi was admitted to the hospital to get a uterine fibroid removed. However, she was also given a hysterectomy without her consent. The procedure was so common that it came to be known as the Mississipi Appendectomy. “In the North Sunflower County Hospital, I would say about six out of the 10 Negro women that go to the hospital are sterilized with the tubes tied,” according to this report in PBS.
SOAS special archive of Hassan Musa’s ‘Mail Art’ has something for everyone – SOAS
“Cultural exchange is a radical act. It can create paradigms for the reverential sharing and preservation of the earth’s water, soil, forests, plants and animals. The ethereal networker aesthetic calls for guiding that dream through action. Cooperation and participation, and the celebration of art as a birthing of life, vision, and spirit are the first steps.”
Books and Borders: a Tamil Migrant About Life in the Sri Lankan Civil War – Brown Girl Magazine
The ticking of a bomb, the whirring of an electric kettle, the smell of kerosene in the family shop, the aroma of chicken roasting in her kitchen, the slap of the father on her mother’s face, the filth coming out of her husband’s mouth, the laughter of children playing outside the refugee camp and the giggle of her youngest daughter. The cold February wind of London reminds Linah* of waves sweeping over her feet in Sri Lanka.
Wasil: A unique platform enabling social integration through storytelling – SOAS
“Stories make it possible for us to overcome our separateness, to find common ground and common cause. To relate a story is to retrace one’s steps, going over the ground of one’s life again, reworking reality to render it more bearable. A story enables us to fuse the world within and the world without. In this way, we gain some purchase over events that confounded us, humbled us and left us helpless. In telling a story we renew our faith that the world is within our grasp.”
MIGRANT DOMESTIC WORKERS AND COVID-19: A CALL TO ACTION – Futures of Work
As the streets of London started clearing out with the impending lockdown, Gracia made her way to her employer’s house. The 46-year-old Filipino woman had been working as a domestic worker with a Turkish family for the last three years. Having arrived in the UK in 2013, Gracia has been supporting four of her children in the Philippines by sending part of her salary back home every month. However, this month would be different. As Gracia went in expecting a normal day of work, she was instead greeted with the news that her services had been suspended indefinitely.
When postcards go digital: early postcards from India online – SOAS
Four young dusky women clad in traditional white clothing pose in a garden. There’s a certain enigma in their eyes, a story best left to the interpretation of the receiver of this sepia-tinted postcard. Perhaps there’s a note at the back that has nothing to with the contents of the visual or perhaps it elaborates
Haramacy: a powerful initiative and safe space for minority artists – SOAS
“hip’ o-crit: An art collector who buys white male art at benefits for liberal causes, but never buys art by women or artists of colour.” This is the definition of a hypocrite by the ‘Guerilla Girls’, an anonymous group of feminist, female artists formed in New York City in 1985 to fight sexism and racism within the art industry. The statement printed in a bold font not just grabs eyeballs in the Tate Modern, London, where it hangs on the wall in a neat frame; but also defines the reality of minority art showcased in the UK today.
Sexualisation, stereotypes, statistics: LGBTQI+ asylum seekers in the UK – SOAS
In August 2019, a UK immigration judge reportedly rejected the asylum claim of a homosexual person from Nigeria where same-sex acts are illegal, stating that he did not have a “gay demeanour”. The interviewer said to him: “You don’t look gay, you look like any other man, why should I believe that you are?”