Patrick Vernon

Heirs of Slavery Online Workshops

Historians, educators, activists — here’s our monthly schedule of free talks and workshops for November and December.

These two sessions will focus on reparations: personal, national, and international.

Monday 3 November, 7:30 PM

Speakers: Dr Michael Banner and Professor Patrick Vernon

Author Dr Michael Banner and activist and commentator Professor Patrick Vernon will join us to discuss their work and how to further reparations and repair.

• Dr Michael Banner is a theologian and Dean of Trinity College, Cambridge. His book Britain’s Slavery Debt: Reparations Now made headlines last year for its “heartfelt and trenchant” (TLS) explanation of why Britain must address this unique wrong.

• Professor Patrick Vernon is a campaigner and cultural historian, working on health and mental health inequalities, migration, and other issues arising from systemic racism.

Monday 1 December, 7:30 PM

Speakers: Jacqueline McKenzie and Dr James Dawkins

Heirs workshop regulars Jacqueline McKenzie and Dr James Dawkins will be discussing the future of the reparations movement as we look towards 2033 and the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery.

• Jacqueline McKenzie is a leading lawyer with the firm Leigh Day, deeply involved in the Windrush compensation claims and discussions about reparations both national and international.

• Dr James Dawkins is a historian of enslavement and related issues who has worked with UCL’s Legacies of British Slavery project and on efforts towards institutional repair and acknowledgement.

  

How to Join

Please choose a workshop, register via contactus@heirsofslavery.org and be part of the Heirs of Slavery dialogues for a better future.

• Our workshops are free of charge and will be held via Zoom.

• We will send you more information closer to the date.

• If you have not registered, you will not be admitted to the Zoom.

• If your Zoom name differs from your registration email, please inform us when the link is sent.

Who Can Attend

The workshops are open to members of Heirs of Slavery, supporters, and others who have identified themselves to us as connected to the wealth or power gained through transatlantic chattel enslavement.

About Heirs of Slavery

Heirs of Slavery is a group of individuals who have discovered that their ancestors acquired significant wealth from, or played a role in organising, the industrialised enslavement of African people in the Americas.

Their forebears were plantation owners, slave traders, merchants, bankers, investors, soldiers, lawyers, and lawmakers.

Since the launch of Heirs of Slavery in April 2023, the group has been approached by many others from the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, the Caribbean, Canada, the United States, and beyond — people who have also recognised this history within their own family stories.