2023 VCSIA Global Impact Award Winner-Abdul Malik AI Nasir
Having researched my ancestry through slavery and colonialism, I’d been invited by Sir Hilary Beckles (Chair of the CARICOM Reparations Commission and Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies), to present a paper with Prime Minister Gaston Browne in Antigua, on Western banking’s links to slavery.
My research caught the attention of many academics there and CARICOM asked me to go back to the UK and help to start a conversation in the public domain on reparations and reparative justice. I took that mandate very seriously and I reached millions when my research was covered by global media outlets, just weeks before starting a PhD in history at University of Cambridge, St Catharine’s College.
Outlets that covered my research included The Wall St Journal, The Times, The Jamaican Observer, BBC News, BBC Radio 4 (Defendants) BBC World Service, CBC Canada, The World (Chicago), The Guardian, The Daily Mail, Varsity and many more.
I subsequently did numerous keynotes and panel discussions for the likes of The Museums Association, Research Libraries UK, The Federation of Human Rights Museums, and many Universities such as Penn State University, (USA) Durham University, Keele University, Brock University (Canada), Liverpool University and the University of Bristol.
I also convened a consortium of Universities and cultural institutions to consider how to decolonise their archives and collections of artefacts relating to the multi-national slavery conglomerate that enslaved my ancestors, known as Sandbach Tinne & Co. The Sandbach Tinne project is now developing plans for a centre for colonial research, a positive action doctoral training partnership and a series of physical and interactive exhibits to tell an epic story of the British empire through the lens of this one family. A pilot project with the Walker Art Gallery was a Museums Association award runner-up in 2023 and a BBC documentary underpinned by my research, won a Royal Television Society Scotland award in 2022.
Socials:
Twitter / Instagram @MalikAndTheOGs
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abdul-malik-al-nasir-ba-hons-pgdip-ma-b4991921/
Blog: http://malikandtheogs.blogspot.com
