Professor Dame Elizabeth Nneka Anionwu in conversation with authors Conrad Koza Bryan and Dr Chamion Caballero
Ireland has been home to people of colour for many centuries.
Drawing on fragmented evidence and evocative imagery from the period. Conrad Koza Bryan and Dr Chamion Caballero have created the first social history book about Irish people of colour in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. They offer a powerful picture of what life, place and language was like for this group in Britain and Ireland.
Irish People of Colour will change your understanding of Ireland’s role within the British Empire during the period of the transatlantic slave trade, the migration of people of colour across the British Isles, and changing social attitudes. It will also provide a much-needed historical context for Irish people of colour today as they make their rightful claims to an Irish identity.
This book has been published by The Association of Mixed Race Irish, thanks to generous support and grants, including from the Government of Ireland: Emigrant Support Programme, the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth through its International Decade for People of African Descent Fund and the Irish Research Council New Foundation Scheme 2023.
Doors 6.30pm, starts 7pm
Free event please register as all attendees will receive a free copy of the book.
Conrad Bryan is a human rights activist and advocate for people of African descent, particularly for the children of mixed African and Irish parents who were put into Irish institutions as children. He is director and co-founder of The Association of Mixed-Race Irish (AMRI) seeking justice for those mixed-race children. After leaving the institutions in Ireland he became an accountant and has a first class master’s degree in International Human Rights Law, from the Irish Centre for Human Rights at Galway University. Conrad moved to the United Kingdom and turned to business, most recently in a non-profit humanitarian aid organisation. He was previously a Trustee and Treasurer of the charity ‘Irish in Britain’.
Elizabeth was inspired to become a nurse at the young age of four because, whilst she was in care, a ‘wonderful nursing nun’ treated her childhood eczema in an expert and sensitive manner. Born in Birmingham in 1947, she identifies herself as of Irish/Nigerian heritage and started work for the NHS as a school nurse assistant in Wolverhampton at the age of 16. Elizabeth’s memoir ‘Dreams from my Mother’ was published in 2021.
Dr Chamion Caballero is the Director and co-founder of The Mixed Museum (TMM), an award-winning digital museum preserving the history of racial mixing in Britain (www.mixedmuseum.org.uk). Awarded a PhD in Sociology from the University of Bristol in 2005, Chamion has held academic posts and fellowships and posts at the LSE, Goldsmiths, University of Bristol and LSBU, and her work – spanning race, ethnicity, families, education, and research methods – has been published widely in academic books, journals and government reports. A regular contributor to newspaper, radio and television programmes, her research with Peter Aspinall on the history of racial mixing in twentieth century Britain formed the foundations of the 2011 BBC2 series Mixed Britannia, on which she also acted as an academic consultant.
