Farida in conversation
Professor Farida Vis, Co-Chair of the Race Staff Forum at Manchester Metropolitan University will be in conversation with her former MA student Cheryl Magowan about their work on Pan-Africanism and anti-racism. Whilst working on her PhD, during the 2003/2004 academic year Farida ran an optional module on the MA in Visual Culture; the Negotiated Option. This gave students the possibility to combine theory with more practical approaches and work with external stakeholders. After an initial planned collaboration with the Imperial War Museum didn’t happen Farida decided to centre this module instead around the Fifth Pan African Congress and to use the historical plaque as a way into uncovering histories and connections to Pan Africanism and its ongoing legacy for Manchester and the students taking this module. This set everyone on an important journey, which for some, like Cheryl, became a life changing experience. In this conversation Farida and Cheryl revisit what this learning journey enabled for both of them and why 13 years later its significance can still be felt and connects to the legacy of the PAC but also directly to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Biography
Farida Vis
Farida started her early life in Kenya and left when she was three and a half. By that time the impact of having seen posters and portraits of Jomo Kenyatta wherever she went had made a lasting impression. She first came to Manchester Metropolitan University in 1998 to do her PhD, in what was then called MIRIAD. She taught throughout her PhD, mainly on issues around race, racism, representation, African struggles for independence, as well as the works of Spike Lee. This feels like a long time ago now! In 2017 she returned to MMU as a Professor of Digital Media, based in the Media Department. She is also the Director of the Visual Social Media Lab (VSML), which brings together interdisciplinary researchers from academia and across sectors interested in better understanding social media images. Her academic and data journalism work focuses on developing methods for analysing social media images, the spread of mis- and disinformation online, and developing novel Visual Media Literacy approaches to combat this. Current work includes a collaborative project on the Black Lives Matter movement and the role of images have played in its emergence on Twitter as well as how images have shaped its current iteration. This work is done in collaboration with colleagues from New York University, Columbia University as well as the University of Waterloo, in Canada. Farida currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies, based at NYU. She has served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Social Media (2013-2016) and the Global Future Council for Information and Entertainment (2016-2019) and is a Director at Open Data Manchester.
Cheryl Magowan
Cheryl Magowan, forged her campaigning voice at 2 years old (alongside her Trini mother - literally) when the local nursery refused to let her join in on the basis of her skin colour. This early years story activated her purpose, to specialise in leading BAME equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives for large arts, cultural and charitable organisations. Plus, at grass-roots levels teaching self-healing for groups who feel marginalised and dispirited. The moment she realised her unconventional ideas might just work was winning a National Guardian Award in 2014, for her project with BME Elders and Mental Health. She is the founder of Pledge & Banish, a non-for-profit organisation that creates safe spaces for all humankind to explore, equip and empower within; living racism, trauma and unconscious conditioning. When not wanting to save-the-world, she is out on a small adventure in Lancashire with her little family.
PAC@75
