- Panel discussion
- Society
- Online
- 9 March 2024
Seeing Britain through the eyes of an insider/outlier: in conversation with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
9 March 2024
2.00 pm
Free
Overview
In this second collaboration with MACFEST, a now internationally recognised Festival, the Manchester Lit & Phil are delighted to host an online conversation with the multi-award-winning journalist and author Professor Yasmin Alibhai Brown FRSL.
Led by our former President, Ian Cameron, the conversation will weave its way through Yasmin’s incredible career – from exile in Uganda, to critically acclaimed scholar and commentator in the UK. Hers is a story worth listening to.
Yasmin will reflect on the many insightful, cutting-edge contributions she has made over the years on a wide range of political, social and cultural issues. And through these reflections, she will speak of the challenges she has had to face, in an often caustic social media environment, particularly as a woman of colour. Her commentary is often delivered with unwavering passion and conviction. And always underscored by a fearless intellectual rigour.
Journeying through a substantial catalogue of successful books and novels, including her latest book Ladies who Punch, Yasmin will illuminate the personal beliefs and values she holds dear: on Feminism, Culture, Art and Activism. And she will offer her personal and nuanced views on matters that continue to demand our attention – including diversity, equality, inclusion, freedom of expression, racism and populism.
In this hard-hitting discussion, Yasmin will be asked questions such as: what is the state of multiculturalism in Britain today? Does she see it as an unqualified success, or in dire need of re-evaluation? And something many of us have been reflecting on in recent years: what does it mean to be British today?
TO BOOK: Please visit MACFEST’s Eventbrite page
Professor Yasmin Alibhai-Brown FRSL
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown – who was exiled from her birthplace, Uganda, in 1972 – is a journalist, broadcaster, and author.
She is a weekly columnist for the I newspaper and has written for numerous publications including the Daily Mirror, Guardian, Sunday Times, Daily Mail, New York Times, and Time Magazine. Yasmin has won several awards for her writing, including the Orwell prize in 2017, and she was shortlisted in the 2023 Society of Editors awards. She is currently a part time professor of journalism at Middlesex University.
A national and international public speaker, and consultant on diversity and inclusion, she co-founded the charity British Muslims for Secular Democracy. Their report The Inner Lives of Troubled Young Muslims was published in November 2020.
Her recent books include Refusing the Veil, Exotic England about England’s infatuation with the east, In Defence of Political Correctness and Ladies Who Punch.
She has twice been voted the 10th most influential Asian in Britain, has eight Hon degrees and sits on the boards of arts organisations. She is also a keen cook and theatre buff, and was governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company for ten years.
