David Olusoga in conversation
David Olusoga, Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester, will feature in conversation as part a tripartite University Initiative celebrating the 75th anniversary of the fifth Pan-African Congress that took place in Manchester in October 1945.
Date: Saturday 17th October 2020
Time: 2pm - 3pm
Location: Online, details to join will be sent to registered guests
Tickets: Free, but please register via Eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/david-olusoga-in-conversation-tickets-123484331961
David Olusoga, who joined the University of Manchester as Professor of Public History in 2019, is one of the UK’s foremost historians whose main subject areas are empire, race and slavery. He was made an OBE in 2019 for his services to history and community integration. He was born in Nigeria to a Nigerian father and British mother, and migrated to the UK with his mother as a young child. He grew up in Gateshead and lived on a council estate. Later his home was attacked by the National Front on multiple occasions and his family eventually forced out. He later attended the University of Liverpool to study the history of slavery. “I got into history because I wanted to make sense of the forces that have affected my life,” he says. “I’m from that generation who would look at Trevor McDonald on television – his gravitas and authority – and see hope and potential.”
After leaving university, Olusoga became a television producer, working on programmes such as Namibia Genocide and the Second Reich, The Lost Pictures of Eugene Smith and Abraham Lincoln: Saint or Sinner. He subsequently became a presenter, beginning in 2014 with The World's War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire, about the Indian, African and Asian troops who fought in the First World War, followed by several other documentaries. His most recent TV series include Black and British: A Forgotten History, The World’s War, A House Through Time and the BAFTA award-winning Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners. As well as his TV work, David is an award-winning author. His books include Civilizations: Encounters and the Cult of Progress, The World’s War, which won First World War Book of the Year, Black & British: A Forgotten History, which was awarded both the Longman-History Today Trustees Award and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize and The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism. He also writes for The Observer, The Guardian, The New Statesman and BBC History Magazine.
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