In addition to performing my written art to wide audiences, I recognise the importance of sharing the subtext of the artistic deliver. Why are certain subjects worthy of deeper discussion through an expressive medium or otherwise? How to best package potentially difficult conversations to land on more receptive ears? What are the longstanding barriers to discussing such topics and how do we lift them? Below are some upcoming conferences where I present my academic research, as well as a few previous ones ones.
**Upcoming Conferences/Symposiums/Seminars**
Summary:
2026
‘Dismissed with Prejudice: Racial Narratives from Low-Diversity Regions’ paper presentation (pending)
British Sociological Association (BSA) Race & Ethnicity Seminar Series 2026, Liverpool John Moores University, UK
‘From Africa to Europe to Asia in One Childhood: Unravelling Complex Narratives through Autoethnography’ paper presentation (pending)
School of English PGR Symposium 2026, University of Nottingham, UK
2025
‘Dismissed with Prejudice: Racial Narratives from Low-Diversity Regions’ paper presentation (pending)
Justice Interrupted: Race, Ethnicity, and Resistance Symposium 2025, University of Roehampton, UK
University of Roehampton
My upcoming presentation ‘Dismissed with Prejudice: Racial Narratives from Low-Diversity Regions’ will be delivered at the University of Roehampton during the Justice Interrupted: Race, Ethnicity & Resistance Symposium in November 2025.
My presentation captures an in-depth account of how racism affects isolated Black lives through memoir/hybrid life writing within autoethnographical stories of my family’s unique experiences whilst a Yorùbá-Nigerian secondary school student in Scots-Britain. The fallout of few lawyers of colour in Scotland means that people of colour often have no option but to engage with white lawyers whose own racist bias bleeds into the services they are being paid for. A source from the West of Scotland Regional Equality Council (WSREC) which supports ethnic minorities in cases of discrimination have recounted scenarios where rather than helping the BAME clients who retain them, white lawyers instead assist their fellow white opposition against their BAME clients. When approaching the Law Society regulatory body to report such professional misconduct, BAME complainants have encountered the ‘old white men’s club’ closing ranks to ‘protect their own’, dismissing the complainants’ grievances with extreme prejudice.
Several studies show that such systemic injustice leads to racism-induced mental stress can have a debilitating physical effect at a cellular level, triggering a variety of illnesses. But considering the continuous manifestation of interrupted justice generation after generation, to what extent can ‘sterile’ research ‘objectively’ presented have a significant effect on the wider ethnic majority population to enact any real change? This research project aims to comprehend wider cultural experience than fact and reportage allow, exploring the opportunities and limits of the principal autoethnography genre and effectiveness of hybrid writing for race-related content involving the legal system in low-diversity regions, pushing back against our injustices being ‘Dismissed with Prejudice’.
**Previous Conferences/Symposiums/Seminars**
Summary:
2025
‘Undoing the Silence: Life-Writing on Race’ paper presentation
Collaboration Café: Conversations on Racism 2025, CoDE Network, Edge Hill University, UK
‘Yorùbá Meets Japan: Tales of Teenaged Wanderlust Encountering Ancient Migration’ paper presentation
Africa-Asia, A New Axis of Knowledge 3 Conference 2025, Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD), Senegal
‘Yorùbá Meets Japan: Tales of Teenaged Wanderlust Encountering Ancient Migration’ poster presentation
Empower - Connecting Black Researchers in the UK Symposium 2025, Imperial College London, UK
2024
‘Past Speculation for Future Inspiration: Artistic Empowerment through African Authenticity’ paper presentation
Women in the Black Fantastic Conference 2024, Anglia Ruskin University/SSF, UK
‘Past Speculation for Future Inspiration: Artistic Empowerment through African Authenticity’ paper presentation
Seen from Èkó (Lagos) Conference 2024, University of Lagos (UNILAG), Nigeria/University of Exeter, UK
2023
‘Black and White Prints: Inserting Colour into UK Publishing’ paper presentation
Situating Black British Writing 2023, Black British Writers and Scholars Alliance (BBWaSA), UK
‘Undoing the Silence: Life-Writing on Race’ paper presentation
When I Dare to be Powerful Conference 2023, Nottingham Trent University, UK
2022
‘Isolated Words: Black Kidult Poetry Journey’ paper presentation
Central School of Speech of Drama, University of London, UK
‘Genre Benders: Memoir-Polemics about Race’ paper presentation
Common Threads: Black & Asian British Women's Writing Conference 2022, University of Brighton, UK
My upcoming presentation ‘Undoing the Silence: Life-Writing on Race’ will be delivered at the Collaboration Café: Conversations on Racism, hosted by Centre for Social Responsibility in Bluecoat Liverpool, on Thursday 11th September, from 12:00 to 4:40pm. This event is funded by CoDE (Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity) as part of their nationwide series.
This event offers a safe, open space for migrants, practitioners, and academics to explore and discuss racism. Building on the CSR Collaboration Cafés, it aims to spark dialogue and foster research and collaboration.
Four speakers - including migrants, grassroots practitioners, and academics - will give short talks on topics such as the systemic roots of racism, intersectionality, and how racism appears in different settings. Group discussions will follow, providing space to reflect on the presentations and share experiences in a respectful, empathetic environment. The event created an inclusive space for dialogue, reflection, and collaboration on issues related to racism, migration, and community engagement.
The event brought together 24 participants, including academics, practitioners, and migrants, to share insights and experiences through talks, creative activities, and open discussions.
Event photos & reflection 1: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7372674286513324032/
Event photos & reflection 2: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ciiku-n-sondergaard-221593_we-recently-co-hosted-a-conversations-on-activity-7374746693927596032-fX4X
Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD), Senegal | poster presentation
Imperial College London, UK | poster presentation
My upcoming presentation ‘Yorùbá Meets Japan: Tales of Teenaged Wanderlust Encountering Ancient Migration’ will be delivered in a two places.
Initially as a poster presentation at Imperial College London during the ‘Empower - Connecting Black Researchers in the UK Symposium’ in May 2025 @bdnimperial
URL: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/empower-connecting-black-researchers-in-the-uk-tickets-1292633434399
Then as a paper presentation at Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD), Dakar, Senegal during the ‘Africa-Asia, A New Axis of Knowledge 3 Conference (AA3 ConFest)’ in June 2025. @ucadsenegal @universite_cheikh_anta_diop @asian_studies
My presentation examines intercontinental connections between Yorùbá (West Africa) and Japan (East Asia) through youthful exploration, uncovering new depths of global human entanglement and intercultural intelligence. As a diasporic Yorùbá-Nigerian studying in the UK, the Eurocentric British view of Japan as extremely different was pervasive. Curiosity about this ‘very foreign land’ led to me attaining a Japanese Government scholarship to complete secondary school there, only for my Afrocentric Yorùbá outlook to recognise unexpected intersections through pounded foodstuffs, rhythmic percussion, clothes & architecture designed for ventilation, strong community values, inter-religious harmony assisted through animist spirituality, double-barrelled wording…and even physical features(!). These different similarities in culture and language contradicted the quintessentially ‘foreign’ Japan projected in my UK ‘homeland’, evoking two questions: why the inter-continental disconnect; and how to reconnect whilst bypassing epistemological racism?
This presentation will argue that both Yorùbá and Japanese cultures share multiple surprising overlaps that displace white hegemonic knowledge as the common norm between the two. It then identifies methods to decolonise perspectives, including to further encourage the escalating re-championing of Yorùbá language education, facilitating immediate recognition of Japanese language overlaps to more readily delve into cultural and climate-based similarities. My area of focus for decolonisination is autoethnographic storytelling, tracing routes of ancient migration, and drawing on historians such as Ivan Van Sertima, Runoko Rashidi, and Midori Fujita. Combining scholarship with personal experience produces compelling narratives that elucidate aligned identities when 'Yorùbá Meets Japan’.
Conference photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DM0c8KdoY8f/
Women in the Black Fantastic is a two-day online conference celebrating the achievements of Black Women in speculative fiction and looking critically at the challenges that they face. Hosts Anglia Ruskin University and organisers SFF have planned the event on Sat 7th – Sun 8th December 2024 to ‘mark the 40th anniversary of Octavia E. Butler winning both the Hugo Award for Best Short Story and the Nebula Award for Best Novelette. In the past decade, and especially since the posthumous success of Parable of the Sower (1993), Butler has become a pillar of contemporary science fiction and fantasy. She has been joined by such authors as Malorie Blackman, Nalo Hopkinson, N.K. Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor, Nisi Shawl and Rivers Solomon. But, under the umbrella of such movements as Afrofuturism, Africanfuturism and Indigenous Futurisms, Black female creators have been innovating speculative fiction in a variety of other media – film, music, comic books and the visual arts. To described these works, writer and curator Ekow Eshun devised the phrase ‘the Black Fantastic’, also the name of his exhibition at the Southbank Centre featuring “visionary Black artists exploring myth, science fiction and Afrofuturism” who are creating “new cosmoses of possibility”.
The keynote speakers are Nyasha Mugavazi and Ebony Elizabeth Thomas. I will be presenting ‘Past Speculation For Future Inspiration: Narrative Empowerment through African Authenticity’ (also YNAD Talks 1) touching on the themes of ‘speculative fiction and postcolonial theory’ and ‘the short story and the short fiction anthology on conference day 2 (Sun 8th Dec 2024). You can purchase tickets here and there are discounts for students and the unwaged. The conference will be held via MS Teams - links will be made available in early November. Do join us as we venture into the Black Fantastic!
Accompanying my writing and performing poems and diasporic stories from across the world, I also present at conferences talking about diasporic experiences and related writing projects, including my upcoming presentation ‘Past Speculation For Future Inspiration’. This will be delivered at this year’s Seen from Èkó (Lagos) Conference 2024, the inaugural platform of the Atlantica series, at University of Lagos (UNILAG) organised jointly by UNILAG Institute of African and Diaspora Studies (IADS) and University of Exeter, Tues 25th - Wed 26th June.
My presentation focuses on ‘unlearning existing modes of perceiving the world’ by looking at the benefits of centring Black subjects within storytelling using real cultures and historical events as the basis of worldbuilding. Sociologist Kehinde Andrews notes, ‘art has often been explicitly used as a tool to advocate for white supremacy,’ to which there has been push back from Black Westerners by centring melanated subjects in non-African cultural output. This includes London-based activists Legally Black ‘recreating famous movie posters, including Titanic and Harry Potter, with Black people taking the leading roles,’ and artists reimagining Birth of Venus, Creation of Adam and Mona Lisa with Black focuses. However, surely the vast annuals of original stories and heroes throughout the African continent would be a better focus in film posters/paintings to celebrate authentic melanated cultures, beauty, ingenuity and diverse Blackness in general. Rather than inserting Black subjects into white art forms, it seems more sensible to insert Black subjects into Black art forms inspired by long-established cultural identities.
In the literature/written arts, diasporic speculative fiction authors using Yorùbá culture and Ifá spirituality/philosophy for their worldbuilding include Nigerian-American Tómi Adéyẹmí in her Children of Blood and Bone novel series. Similarly, in my forthcoming short story collection Ẹrẹ́dò Games (named for my hometown’s historical landmark Sùǹgbọ́ Ẹrẹ́dò), the central parameters are determined by our Kọ́jọ́dá calendar. First exposure to these Ifá and Kọ́jọ́dá aspects has elicited excitement from Yorùbá culture novices with some thinking their description sounded futuristic rather than a millennia-old West African tradition (current calendar year 10,065). Such excitement can also build confidence in younger diasporic generations as consumers enjoy pre-colonial Yorùbá cultural 'purity' untainted by its post-colonial disruption, upending any residual white supremacist messaging by celebrating our melanated identities through artistry. In this way, the diaspora can truly reap the storytelling benefits of past speculation for future inspiration.
Accompanying my writing and performing poems and diasporic stories from across the world, I also present at conferences talking about diasporic experiences and related writing projects, including my upcoming lecture ‘Black and White Prints: Inserting Colour into UK Publishing’. This will be delivered at this year’s Situating Black British Writing Conference 2023, at London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) organised by Goldsmiths College, University of London, Saturday 23rd September.
My presentation focuses on the politics of Black publishing in the post-Brexit era of Black Lives Matter (BLM) through the paradigm of my upcoming memoir-polemic series ‘Stained Glass Eyes (SGE): A Memoir on Race, Family and Multiculturalism’. It first examines feeling hindered in writing on race in the general pre-Brexit/BLM social climate defined by a passive/tokenistic anti-racist sentiment. Across UK publishing, attitudes included:
*Black authors and stories often being side-lined whilst white authors writing ‘our stories’ seemingly preferred
*few Black/Global Majority literary agents or publishers of colour, also leading to marketing challenges for books by diverse authors
*Black writers not being properly compensated (huge pay disparities), exposed (negligible book festivals invitations) or recognised (rare literary prizes nominations)
When writing SGE, I therefore felt my narrative needed a white persona at various points for readers to fully receive the racist recounting within as the rule vs the exceptions. I also felt only Black/Global Majority-specific versus generic writing development organisations could give me adequate support.
In contrast, the post-Brexit/BLM publishing industry attitude has revealed a slightly stronger/more tangible anti-racist sentiment, lessening my hinderances to writing SGE content. These include:
*Several schemes promoting inclusivity such as PRH’s WriteNow campaign and Creative Access’ paid publishing internships.
*Supporting global majority workers in the industry through the 2016 BAME in Publishing Network.
*2017 Jhalak Prize for writers of colour, promoting more awareness of diverse narrative to a much wider readership.
I have since felt more freedom to tell the full SGE story, particular seeing more UK publishers becoming more open to racial narratives in addition to Black British publishers like Jacaranda bringing spearheading drives like #TwentyIn2020: Black Writers, British Voices. More literary agents are also seeking diverse writers. Additionally, generic writing development groups like The Literary Consultancy facilitate mentoring scholarships benefiting writers of colour. In addition, more Black-owned hybrid publishers are helping writers publish their books without over-compromising their message.
All this helps us better negotiate our way through the UK politics of Black Publishing.
Contact conference organiser/research assistant Degna Stone for more info on d.stone@gold.ac.uk @LdnMetArchives #SBBW
- Registration is FREE! https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/696587661447
In addition to writing and performing poems and diasporic stories from across the world, I am also present at conferences talking about diasporic experiences and related writing projects including my lecture Undoing the Silence: Life-Writing on Race. This will be delivered at this year’s When I Dare to be Powerful Conference 2023 at Nottingham Trent University, Wednesday 21st June.
My talk looks at memoir-polemics focusing on racism. Recent examples include journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, journalist/lawyer Afua Hirsch’s Brit(ish): Race, Identity and Belonging, rapper/social commentator Akala with Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire, as well as my upcoming autoethnographical addition Stained Glass Eyes: A Memoir on Race, Family and Multiculturalism. Like these other life-writers, it has been a journey bringing my racist experiences to the fore. It started with xenophobia experienced at school being actively silenced by pupils walking away from conversations about racism; actively silenced by teachers squashing any complaints (mentioned in Akala’s Natives); and passively silenced by family who were going through their own strives with racial abuse and me not wanting to pile onto them. The next stage was university studies and trying to bridge the knowledge gap of racism’s existence and execution brought over from my gagged childhood leaving many questions unanswered. However, whilst higher education was enlightening in some areas, the experience evoked even more questions than it answered (mentioned in Afua Hirsch’s Brit[ish]).
In my working life, after hearing too many stories of racial bigotry overlapping with my own, I decided to write SGE to expose racism and drive social change towards ethical parity. But self-censorship still tempted my gumption, tentatively changing all ‘controversial’ truth to red font for later omission. My text’s colour coding was apparently pandering to the same white fragility informing my speech’s colour coding from school days. No, these stories encapsulating the plight of Black people should all be in black font, the controversy held within being the audacity of racism, not the audacity of me to voice it (infused in Reni Eddo-Lodge’s title Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race).
So, like these other life-writers/change-makers on race, watch this space to hear me undo the silence…
Contact conference organisers Patricia Francis (PGR) for more info on whenidaretobepowerful@gmail.com
In addition to diasporic stories from across the world, I also present at conferences speaking about diasporic experiences and related writing projects including my talk Isolated Words: Black Kidult Poetry Journey. This will be delivered at this year’s Taking the Mic: Black British Spoken Word Poetry since 1965 Conference 2022 at the University of London School of Speech and Drama on Friday 18th November.
My talk focuses on how Black British spoken word poets can inspire children in less multicultural regions to use poetry as a conduit to process racism like Jackie Kay. Growing up in Scotland with the UK’s highest race-related murder rate, my Nigerian family’s life of attempted arsons and stabbings were not conversation for my primary school classmates talking about cartoons, toys and birthday parties. My mode of solitary racial expression became poetry, and being shortlisted for a 1990 anti-apartheid competition with the poem ‘Why?’ validated my soul. With Benjamin Zephaniah’s stimulating visit to Glasgow schools, I continued dealing with race in poetic isolation throughout my secondary school years with ‘The Sound of Freedom’ for South Africa’s first 1994 democratic, elections and ‘Horizon’ exploring realigned identities. My latter secondary school years in Japan produced ‘Going Home’…only for my UK ‘home’ to unceremoniously reject me the moment I returned.
University in England was my first experience dealing with race in community vs isolation. Motivated through local performances by Grace Nichols, I attended the African and Caribbean Society’s poetry evenings. In those creative spoken word spaces, I offered up ‘1st Days Lesson’ about systemic bias in education to surprisingly rapturous applause. Come graduation, I was less confident voicing such themes at work for majority white audiences. But after encouragement from Rodger Robinson and the pandemic creating accessible online Black spaces, I developed cultural-appropriation rebuke ‘Strong Tea’ and continent-hopping celebration ‘Identity: Global Roots’ before performing them at literary festivals and more.
Stirred forward by these dynamic performance poets, these politicised poetic life strands are now entwined with the winding prose of my memoir-polemic ‘Stained Glass Eyes’ exposing my Black kidult journey of nevermore isolated words.
Contact conference convenors: Dr Deirdre Osborne FRSA (Goldsmiths) Dr Emily Kate Timms (University of Vienna) Josette Bushell-Mingo OBE (Principal, Central School of Speech and Drama) or conference assistant: Shannon Navarro (Central School of Speech and Drama) for more info on takingthemic2022@univie.ac.at. You can also follow updates on Twitter: @PoetryOff_Page
Common Threads: Black & Asian British Women's Writing Conference
In addition to diasporic stories from across the world, I am also present at conferences talking about diasporic experiences and related writing projects including my lecture Genre Benders: Polemic Memoirs about Race. This will be delivered at this year’s Common Threads: Black & Asian British Women’s Writing Conference 2022 at the University of Brighton, Thurs 21st - Sat 23rd July.
My talk focuses on how the literature and publishing world react when straight-laced auto-ethnography writing meets creative non-fiction prose. This unique genre mesh features in my memoir series ‘Stained Glass Eyes (SGE)’ mixing culture-hopping narratives between Nigeria, Scotland, Japan, etc with factual insights into sociology, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, etc to give essential context to my life journey. This niche genre has already been successfully done by celebrated authors such as journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge with ‘Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race’, journalist/lawyer Afua Hirsch with ‘Brit(ish): Race, Identity and Belonging’, and rapper/social commentator Akala with ‘Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire’. So why are literary circles not as quick to embrace similar writing styles from debut authors in this area?
My talk focuses on how the literature and publishing world react when straight-laced auto-ethnography writing meets creative non-fiction prose. This unique genre mesh features in my memoir series ‘Stained Glass Eyes (SGE)’ mixing culture-hopping narratives between Nigeria, Scotland, Japan, etc with factual insights into sociology, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, etc to give essential context to my life journey. This niche genre has already been successfully done by celebrated authors such as journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge with ‘Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race’, journalist/lawyer Afua Hirsch with ‘Brit(ish): Race, Identity and Belonging’, and rapper/social commentator Akala with ‘Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire’. So why are literary circles not as quick to embrace similar writing styles from debut authors in this area?
Enthusiasm can be seen from initial readers of varied backgrounds ranging from parents of primary school kids celebrating the explicit definitions of racism without ambiguity, to 16-year-olds loving the visual depictions of social spheres to enhance understanding. An eager audience is there for the story/factual content of polemic memoirs about race like SGE, so let’s relax the literary gatekeepers’ cautious approach regarding the ‘who’s and ‘how’s of its genre bending delivery.
Contact conference organisers Professor Suzanne Scafe (Brighton), Dr. Sarah Lawson-Welsh (York St. John), Dr Kadija George (Brighton), Dr Vedrana Velickovic (Brighton) and Amanda Holiday (Brighton) for more info on commonthreads2022@gmail.com
Britain and the World
My talk focuses on the importance of transnational perspectives with regards to the movement of peoples & ideas within the context of Nigeria before, during and after British colonialism. It juxtaposes historical events with my Yorùbá-Nigerian parents’ lifetimes, examining how the colonial campaign shaped their world view. What did they think of the British who placed themselves at the top of the ‘mental colonialism pyramid scheme’? Subsequently, what did mum & dad either consciously or subconsciously think of themselves and Nigeria in general at the base of the colonial ‘hierarchy’? Did that inform their choice to leave home and embark on Britain? Were they then really surprised at the racial prejudice they experienced here?
Contact conference organisers Martin, Jacob, and Jess for more info.
You can also follow #BATW2022 updates on Twitter and Facebook.
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