Fanon at 100

Mehdi AIT OUKHZAME is a PhD researcher at the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne in Australia, currently doing a research stay at the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Potsdam in Germany. Mehdi’s PhD project develops the idea of ‘Black and queer of colour child’s standpoint’ as an optic for the critique of heteronormativity and anti-Blackness in self-life-narratives written by Afro-diasporic Black and queer of colour authors. Prior to starting his PhD, Mehdi received a RMA in Gender Studies at Utrecht University. 

Afu-Sensi! is a community organizer, writer, artist and a student of Literary and Cultural Analysis (LCA) at the University of Amsterdam. She is a founding member of the University of Colour (UoC) — an action group, established as a collective during the 2015 Maagdenhuis liberation, that aims to foster a more socially just academic environment at both the curricular and demographic levels, centering non-Eurocentric perspectives and ideas with a focus on decolonization, social justice, and equity.

Afu-Sensi! has been an active member during the processes that lead up to and followed the Diversity Commission (DIVCOM) chaired by Professor Gloria Wekker. After the DIVCOM presented their report with recommendations in 2016, she became a UoC delegate member in the Diversity Forum, a coalition of the Maagdenhuis action groups, the University representative bodies (Central Student Council & Central Workers Council) and several stakeholders concerned about the implementation of the DIVCOM report.

Afu-Sensi! is also a UoC organizing member of the annual Africadelic Festival and Fela Day.

Inspired by past actions and events; her studies at LCA; as well as scholars such as bell hooks, Franz Fanon, Édouard Glissant, and Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí — Afu-Sensi! thinks about the (mis-)uses of Blackness in academia as well as her position as a Black scholar. 

Alessandra BENEDICTY-KOKKEN is University Docent at the University of Amsterdam’s Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) and Literary and Cultural Analysis, and she maintains an affiliation to the Center for Worker of Education at City University of New York, an institution to whose pedagogical model she is extremely dedicated. She is co-Book Reviews Editor for the Journal of Haitian Studies, with Marie-José Nzegou-Tayo and a board member of the Haitian Studies Association. Most recently she is co-editor on: Rethinking Gender from the Ethnographic Museum, with Journal of Material Culture (2023) and online with the Research Center of Material Culture, as well as an article rethinking the legacy of Dessalines as related to the notion of betrayal, as well as two articles on rethinking the (im)possibilities of feminist solidarity, with a co-written article with Cae Joseph-Masséna on Tracy Chapman’s œuvre and the role of the crossroads in Africana thought, as well as an article on Évelyne Trouillot’s and Kettly Mars’s novels.  She is author of Spirit Possession in French, Haitian, and Vodou Thought: An Intellectual History (2015), co-editor of “Revisiting Marie Vieux Chauvet,” a special issue of Yale French Studies (2016), with Kaiama L. Glover, and co-editor (with Glover, Mark Schuller, and Jhon Picard Byron) of The Haiti Exception: Anthropology and the Predicament of Narrative (2016). She is currently working on a book titled Vodou, the Sacred and the Secular, in Contemporary Art and Performance, the Literary, and the Philosophical. 

Marija Cetinić works as Assistant Professor of Literary and Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam, coordinates the MA Comparative Literature, and is a researcher at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis. She is a founding member of the research group Sex Negativity and runs the seminar series We Have Never Had Sex. At Sandberg Institute, she teaches in the MA Critical Studies. At Perdu, center for poetry and experiment, she is a member of the programming collective. She co-organizes the (Trans--) Sexualities + Psychoanalysis Summer School. Her current research is on negativity and feminization.

Mano DELEA is a Lecturer in Modern and Dutch History at the University of Amsterdam. He previously was a Lecturer in American Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen, a Lecturer in Political - and Economic History at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, and a Visiting Lecturer in Transatlantic Studies at Utrecht University. He was Program Director of the Black Europe Summer School (2014-2021) in Amsterdam, and a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley (spring 2024). The topics of his published works are slavery and its legacy, Pan-Africanism, colonialism, imperialism, economic development and ethnic relations. His PhD research examined the transformations and knowledge production of Pan-Africanism. He wrote several articles, including on Edward W. Blyden and Otto and Hermina Huiswoud and co-wrote a report commissioned by the National Institute for the Study of Dutch Slavery and its Legacy (NiNsee) regarding the 1862 Dutch parliamentary debate on the abolition of slavery, which was presented to the Dutch House of Representatives in 2022. His first monograph Pan-Africanism: Visions, Initiatives, and Transformation was published by Lexington Books in 2024.

Francio GUADELOUPE has been a tenured faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) since 2013, where he integrates public anthropology with a passion for teaching and conducting ethnographic research. In June 2024, he was appointed Professor by Special Appointment of Public Anthropology of Kingdom Relations at the UvA. In addition to his academic role, Guadeloupe is a senior research fellow at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV-KNAW). He previously served as President of the University of St. Martin (USM) for four years, during which the institution secured international accreditation for its associate degree programs in Hospitality and Business. His leadership also fostered collaboration with the University of the U.S. Virgin Islands, enabling USM to offer internationally accredited joint Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Educational Sciences and Business Administration.

Dr. Yanique HUME is a Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of West Indies, Cave Hill Campus specializing in Caribbean cultural thought and the religious and performance cultures of the African diaspora. She conducts interdisciplinary research in the humanities and creative arts, utilizing cultural anthropology, cultural studies, comparative religion, performance studies, and critical dance practice.  Dr. Hume has worked with companies across the Caribbean exploring a range of ritual and modern dance idioms. She is also a member of the dance-scholar collective, “Afro-Feminist Performance Routes.” Dr. Hume is the co-editor of Caribbean Cultural Thought: From Plantation Diaspora (2013); Caribbean Popular Culture: Power, Politics and Performance (2016); and Passages and Afterworlds: Anthropological Perspectives on Death in the Caribbean (2018). Her current book project, "Ecstatic Play: Transcending Spirit in the Traditions of the Wake," engages in a comparative investigation of the aesthetic and performative dimensions of Black Atlantic mortuary customs as it explores the work of play in sustaining black lives. She is the recipient of grants from esteemed institutions such as the Social Science Research Council, the International Development Research Centre, Ford Foundation, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. 

Wigbertson Julian ISENIA (they/them) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. Trained in Cultural Analysis and holding a Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam, their interdisciplinary work merges ethnography and archival research to explore Caribbean identities, postcolonial conditions, and queer subjectivities, particularly in Curaçao. Their scholarship interrogates the entanglements of gender, sexuality, and (post)colonialism through cultural texts, archives, and performances. Isenia has published in Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies, Feminist Review, Theaterkrant, and Small Axe. They have also contributed chapters to The Routledge Companion to Sexuality and Colonialism, Postcolonial Intellectuals in Europe, and forthcoming anthologies with Oxford University Press.

Wayne MODEST is Director of Content of Wereldmuseum, with locations in Amsterdam, Leiden, and Rotterdam. He is also professor (by special appointment) of Material Culture and Critical Heritage Studies at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. A cultural studies scholar by training, Modest works at the intersection of material culture, memory and heritage studies, with a strong focus on colonialism and its afterlives in Europe and the Caribbean. His most recent publications include the co-edited publications, Matters of Belonging: Ethnographic Museums in A Changing Europe (Sidestone Publications, 2019, together with Nick Thomas, et al), and Victorian Jamaica (Duke University Press, 2018, together with Tim Barringer). He is currently working on several publication projects including Museum Temporalities (with Peter Pels, forthcoming Routledge) and Curating the Colonial (with Chiara de Cesari, forthcoming Routledge). Modest has (co)curated several exhibitions, most recently, the Kingston Biennial (2022) entitled Pressure (together with David Scott and Nicole Smythe-Johnshon) and What We Forget (2019) with artists Alana Jelinek, Rajkamal Kahlon, Servet Kocyigit, and Randa Maroufi, an exhibition that challenged dominant, forgetful representations of Europe that erase the role of Europe’s colonial past in shaping our contemporary world.

Kwame NIMAKO is the founder and director of the Black Europe Summer School (BESS) based in Amsterdam since 2007 (www.blackeurope.org). He holds degrees in sociology and a PhD in economics from the University of Amsterdam where he also taught International Relations in the Department of Political Sciences (1992-2013) and Race and Ethnic Relations at the Centre for Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) (1986- 1991). He held visiting professor positions in the Department of African American Studies at the University of California at Berkeley (Spring 2018 and 2012-2015) and at the Anton de Kom University of Suriname (2011) and has also given lectures at universities, conferences and organizations in the UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, South Africa and Sweden. Dr. Nimako has consulted with several private and public institutions including the National Institute for the Study of Dutch Slavery and its Legacy (NiNsee) in Amsterdam, the Amsterdam Municipal Council, and the Dutch Ministry of Home Affairs. He was the Principal Research Consultant for Focus Consultancy Ltd (UK) (1996-1997) on the Migrants in Europe Project commissioned by the General-Secretariat of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States (in Brussels). He is the author or co-author of more than thirty books, reports and guidebooks, on economic development, ethnic relations, social policy, urban renewal, and migration.  His most recent book is The Dutch Atlantic: Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation (with Glenn Willemsen) (London, Pluto Press, 2011). Among his recent book chapters and articles are: Remembrance, Commemoration, and Apologies: The Dutch Context and Implications for Other European Nations Compendium: Journal of Comparative Studies (2024);‘Multiculturalism vs Multiculturalism in the Dutch Material Real World’; In: Wayne Modest and Wendeline Flores (eds), Our Colonial Inheritance (Lannoo, Wereld Museum, Amsterdam, 2024); ‘The Roads, the Belt, and the contemporary international political-economic system’; In: The Belt and Road Initiative in Asia, Africa, and Europe (Routledge 2023); Editors,  David Arase and Pedro Amakasu Raposo); Black Europe and a Contested European Union; In: The Open Veins of the Postcolonial: Afrodescendants and Racism, edited by Iolanda Evora and Inocencia Mata (Tagus Press, Dartmouth, 2022); Araújo, Marta; Nimako, Kwame (2022), Mobilizing History: Racism, Enslavement and Public Debate in Contemporary Europe, in Shirley Anne Tate and Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Race and Gender. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan; Lost and Found: sovereignties and state formations in Africa and Asia, In: Routledge Handbook of Africa-Asia Relations, edited by Pedro Miguel Amakasu Raposo de Medeiros Carvalho, David Arase and Scarlett Cornelissen (Routledge: London 2018); Kwame Nkrumah: In the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia on Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism (London 2016); Layers of Emancipation Struggles: Some Reflections on the Dutch Case; In: Smash the Pillars (Lexington Books, London, 2018), edited by Melissa E. Weinar and Antonio Carmona Baez;  ‘Location and Social Thought in the Black: A Testimony of Africana Intellectual Tradition’ In: Sabine Broeck and Carsten Junker, Postcoloniality,-Decoloniality-Black Critique: Joints and Fissures (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2014); and Nkrumah, African Awakening and Neo-colonialism: How Black America awakened Nkrumah and Nkrumah awakened Black America In: The Black Scholar: Journal of Black Studies and Research (Vol 40, No.2 Summer 2010).

Dr Rehnuma SAZZAD is a Research Fellow at the Institute of English Studies and Associate Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. She is an Associate Editor and a Reviews Editor of Journal of Postcolonial Writing, an Editorial Advisory Board Member for English: Journal of the English Association, and a co-editor of TheJournal of Historical Fictions. Her first monograph, Edward Said’s Concept of Exile: Identity and Cultural Migration in the Middle East (2017), creates a portrait of redoubtable intellectual practice in today’s world by adding new depths to discourses of resistance, home and identity. She has published a considerable number of pieces on postcolonial and world literatures. She has nearly completed her second monograph reflecting on linguistic nationalism in decolonized South Asia, Dynamics among Mother Language, Motherland, and Liberation Struggle: Decolonization of South Asia in Perspective. She is co-editing a volume on Édouard Glissant’s concepts, which is going to be published from Liverpool University Press (2025/26). She is also editing a collection for Vernon Press, Decolonizing the Curriculum: Teaching Race and Developing Knowledge about Indigenous Literature. She is a regular contributor for Impakter Limited, a London-based online magazine for Culture and Society.

Michael L. THOMAS is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Critical Cultural Theory capacity group at the University of Amsterdam, where he also teaches in Media Studies as a part of the Film Team. He has held positions as a Humboldt Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow in the JFK Institute for North American Studies at the Freie University Berlin, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and coordinator of Africana Studies at Susquehanna University, and a Post-Doctoral Lecturer in Structured Liberal Education at Stanford University, among others. He specializes in work in Social Aesthetics, an investigation of aesthetic dimensions of social life. He has published work in the Critical Philosophy of Race, Philosophy and Literature, American Studies, Social Theory, Political Theory, Speculative Philosophy, and most recently Band Research. In each of these arenas, he uses aesthetic feeling, art and media objects, or reflections on aesthetic theory to analyze sociological processes and their implications in the search for novel ways of organizing “social life.”