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Who Counts as a Protester? Conservative Theology, Social Justice, and Transnational Religious-Racial Solidarities in the 1930s
Wednesday, November 4, 12:15 pm –13:30 pm
What should we make of protesters for justice who don't fit into neat camps, who might be conservative in one respect but progressive in another? This keynote will explore a period of economic hardship, racial discrimination and religious change, where the theological conservatism of one group of protesters underscored their advocacy of social justice.
Prof. Stephen Tuck is Academic Director and BASc Course Director at the London Interdisciplinary School (LIS). A historian of the United States and transatlantic society, his work examines anti-racist protest, the intersections of religion, racism, and dissent, and how national histories are written and contested. Before joining LIS, he was Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford and the inaugural director of Oxford’s interdisciplinary humanities research center (TORCH). He is the author of We Ain’t What We Ought to Be: The Black Freedom Struggle from Emancipation to Obama and The Night Malcolm X Spoke at the Oxford Union: A Transatlantic Story of Antiracist Protest.
The Infrastructure of Dissent: Data Activism, Democratic Backsliding, and the Future of Democracy
Thursday, November 5, 11:15 am –12:30 pm
What does it mean to resist when power is increasingly embedded in everyday life's infrastructure? This keynote argues that contemporary authoritarianism operates not only through repression and democratic erosion, but also by normalizing infrastructural arrangements that classify, govern, and constrain political possibilities. Tracing the evolution of data activism from counter-data practices to infrastructural contestation, it suggests that exposing injustice is no longer enough: resistance must also challenge the systems that make injustice possible. This shift invites us to rethink protest beyond visible mobilization and consider the possibilities—and limits—of infrastructural resistance for democratic futures.
Prof. Stefania Milan is Professor of Critical Data Studies in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her research examines how digital technologies and data shape political participation and governance, with particular attention to infrastructures, power, and political agency—often through the lens of data activism and datafied social movements. She is also a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and a Research Associate/Chair, “Artificial Intelligence & Democracy,” at the School of Transnational Governance (European University Institute). She leads the NWO-funded IN-SIGHT project, which asks how public values and rights can be built into the infrastructures that organize digital life, and has previously been PI of the ERC-funded DATACTIVE project on data activism and civic engagement with data.
The keynote addresses questions regarding the current culture of spectacle in the contemporary political scene in the Americas—and particularly in the United States—and, using the example of musical performances by Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, and Bad Bunny at the Grammy Awards and the Super Bowl, examines how the relationship between music and protest may need to be redefined in the context of new media cultures and new debates about public space.
Prof. Wilfried Raussert is Professor of North American Literary and Cultural Studies / InterAmerican Studies at Bielefeld University and German Director of the Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies (CALAS). His work spans American, Inter-American, and Black Americas studies, with a particular focus on music, visual culture, public space, and resistance movements across the Americas. He is the author of What’s Going On: How Music Shapes the Social and Off the Grid: Art Practices and Public Space, and co-editor of Black Power in Hemispheric Perspective: Movements and Cultures of Resistance in the Black Americas.
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