Hakim Adi is a British historian and scholar who specializes in African affairs. He is the first African-British historian to become a professor of history in the UK. He has written widely on Pan-Africanism and the modern political history of Africa and the African diaspora, including the 2018 book Pan-Africanism: A History.[1] Currently a professor at the University of Chichester,[2] Adi is an advocate of the education curriculum including the history of Africa and its diaspora.[3]
Career
Adi has spoken of his motivation for becoming a historian of Africa and the African diaspora being that he wanted to research and teach a subject that had been denied to him.[4] In 1976, he began studying at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London University, where he obtained a BA and eventually in 1994 his PhD in African history.[5][6] He has described himself as "a late developer into higher education.... I've taught history at every level you can imagine: schools, prison, adult education, further education, university. I've taught in Broadmoor, Strangeways — you name it, I've done it...".[7] He was Reader in the History of Africa and the African Diaspora at Middlesex University for many years until the department of history was closed down. In 2012, he took up an appointment at the University of Chichester, West Sussex, lecturing in African History [7] and is one of the few African British academics to become recognised as a professor.[8] He supervised the master of research thesis of the Nigerian human rights activist Ibrahim B. Anoba at the University of Chichester in 2020.[9]
He also leads the History Matters group, a collection of academics and teachers concerned with the under-representation of students and teachers of African and Caribbean heritage within the History discipline.[11][12] In 2015, the group convened the conference entitled "History Matters" that was held at the Institute of Historical Research.[13][14]
He is a founder of the Young Historians Project, a non-profit organisation working encourage young historians of African and Caribbean heritage in Britain, which developed out of the History Matters initiative.[2][10][13][15][16]
Chichester University's closure of Master's by Research (MRes) course
In May 2023, the Master's by Research (MRes) course in the history of Africa and the African diaspora,[19] which Adi founded in 2017, came under threat of closure by Chichester University, with the proposed redundancy of Adi on the grounds that the course had recruited only "a relatively small number of students".[20] Noting that the course is the only one of its kind in Europe "and was one of the recommendations of the History Matters conference in 2015 supported by the University of Chichester", Adi was reported in The Voice as saying: "All the evidence we have is that the course is badly needed. It has produced 6 current PhD students for the university and could produce even more if adequately advertised. It has recruited and has support in Britain, North America, Africa and the Caribbean and even Asia."[21] The threatened cut was described by the University and College Union as an "attack on black academia".[22][23]
A public petition against Adi's redundancy and suspension of recruitment for the course was started in July 2023, quickly winning support from more than 10,000 signatories.[20][21][24][25][26] Adi further commented: "At Chichester we have 16 black postgraduate history students....Now those students have lost their supervisor. The university has no suitable person, no specialist in the history of Africa and the African diaspora, to supervise those students."[19]
The Royal Historical Society, which in 2018 published the report Race, Ethnicity & Equality in UK History that highlighted racial and ethnic inequalities in the teaching and practice of History in the UK,[27] said in a statement dated 12 September 2023: "The President and Council of the Royal Historical Society are extremely disappointed and concerned by the University of Chichester's recent decision to terminate its MRes in the History of Africa and the African Diaspora. This action also sees the redundancy of Professor Hakim Adi, the course leader and a prominent UK contributor to the understanding and communication of Black British history. News of Professor Adi's redundancy came a week before inclusion of his latest book, African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History, on the 2023 Wolfson Prize shortlist....With its decision, the University of Chichester goes against initiatives that seek to build an infrastructure for teaching and researching Black British History—one that's accessible to students of diverse backgrounds across the UK."[28]
Writings
Adi has written and published widely on Pan-Africanism and on the history of the African diaspora, particularly Africans in Britain. He is the author of several books, among them West Africans in Britain 1900–1960: Nationalism, Pan-Africanism and Communism (1998), Pan-Africanism and Communism: The Communist International, Africa and the Diaspora, 1919–1939 (2013), African and Caribbean People in Britain (2022), and he is the joint author (with Marika Sherwood) of The 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress Revisited (1995) and Pan-African History: Political Figures from Africa and the Diaspora since 1787 (2003).
Reviewing Adi's 2018 book, Pan-Africanism: A History, Adom Getachew wrote in The Nation in 2019: "Few scholars are better positioned than Adi to chart Pan-Africanism’s history: Over the course of two decades, he has chronicled it and the modern black experience more broadly as the writer or editor of 11 books, not to mention many journal articles and chapters written for other books. In Pan-Africanism, he brings to bear his encyclopedic knowledge of black freedom movements in Africa, the Americas, and Europe."[29]Gretchen Gerzina in a review of his 2022 book African and Caribbean People in Britain wrote: "Adi's project is a comprehensive social and political history that stretches from recent discoveries concerning inhabitants of Roman Britain all the way through to the advent of the Black Lives Matter movement, the Grenfell Tower fire and the Guardian's coverage of the Windrush Scandal."[30]
Adi has also written history books for children, including The History of the African and Caribbean Communities in Britain (2005).[6]
His most recent publication as editor is 2023's Many Struggles: New Histories of African and Caribbean People in Britain (Pluto Press), about which Ama Biney, lecturer in Black British history at the University of Liverpool, has said: "This valuable book enriches our understanding of the contribution of African and Caribbean people across British cities and towns from the 17th century to contemporary times, as well as their transnational connections and commitments to the Caribbean and Africa."[31]
In a review for The Observer, academic Kehinde Andrews wrote that Adi's 2022 book African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History "is his crowning achievement; a meticulously researched tour de force that charts black presence on the British Isles from Cheddar Man through the African Roman legions and Black Tudors and into the present day. ... Adi's work should represent the final nail in the coffin for those who think that Britain was ever truly white and should be kept that way.[32]
With Marika Sherwood, Pan-African History: Political Figures from Africa and the Diaspora since 1787, London/New York: Routledge: 2003. ISBN978-0415173537
Co-editor with Caroline Bressey, Belonging in Europe – The African Diaspora and Work, London: Routledge, 2010. ISBN978-0415846219
Pan-Africanism and Communism: The Communist International, Africa and the Diaspora, 1919–1939, Trenton, New Jersey, USA: Africa World Press, 2013. ISBN978-1592219162
"George Padmore and the 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress", in Fitzroy Baptiste and Rupert Lewis (eds), George Padmore: Pan-African Revolutionary, Kingston, JA: Ian Randle, 2009.
