Walter Rodney Dissertation Awards, July 2022
It is a great pleasure to announce that this year the Walter Rodney prize for undergraduate dissertations has been awarded to Khalfan Al-Badwawi (BA History) and Kwame Boateng (BA Development Studies).
Khalfan's dissertation on 'Race and Slavery in Oman' examines the history of slavery in Oman, both conceptually, historically, and in terms of its treatment - and denial - in the political present. This centrally involves looking at African diasporas, and peoples of African descent, who have ended up in Oman as a result of its historical relations with the East African coast. Khalfan explores this phenomenon by thinking carefully about other forms of enslavement and how they have transformed in Oman and in the Indian Ocean world over the longue durée. He contends that Oman’s history of slavery must be understood alongside - and not as a radical rupture from - other forms of unfree labour akin to slavery experienced by racialised workers in Oman today. This project calls into question familiar and Eurocentric historical periodisations, such as the modern/pre modern, and the way they obscure the legacies of enslavement and continued unfree labour today.
Kwame's dissertation entitled 'Refusing Development: Otro Mundo es Posible, All Power to the People!' is a theoretically engaged interrogation of the racialised foundations and legacies of international aid and explores the ways in which marginalized communities have resisted these efforts and re-envisioned 'development.' The text draws on decolonial literature and McKittrick's concept of 'plantation futures' to deconstruct the coloniality embedded in development thinking and programmes and then goes on to analyse the ways in which development has been re-imagined by the Black Panther Party and the Zapatista movement. Kwame is a shining example of a student who is able to understand the global challenges and also imagine the possibilities of a world-making through an anti-racist and anti-imperial praxis.
Congratulations!
