Pia Masurczak studied English, German and History at the Universities of Freiburg and Aberdeen. In her PhD thesis she researched colonial travel writing in and discussed how British travellers in India negotiated conflicted identities through phenomena such as idleness, inertia and indolence. Since 2016 she has been working as a freelance journalist with German public broadcasters like Deutschlandradio and SWR, focusing on postcolonial, feminist and public health issues.
She will focus on Postcolonial Europe and will be an opportunity to study European identities and histories from a different perspective. With the new angle of study presented by the lecturer, the idea is to have a broader vision of the subject by including not only the colonial period and the regimes of oppression and exploitation that thrived in the past, but also how these histories are connected to the cultural, social, political and economic systems we live in today.
Moving away from traditional academic courses, this lecture will take the form of a radio program, making it dynamic, attractive and accessible to a broad audience.
During her talk, Pia Masurczak will explore how in the past years, debates about the restitution of African art and artefacts, about the arrival of refugees and migrants, or about systemic racism have (re-)surfaced in many European countries. As campaigners have pointed out, these issues are at least partly connected to the colonial legacy of many European nations and Europe as a whole.
As a completement to this event and with the aim of delving further into this complex and exciting subject, we are delighted to offer you a five-part podcast series produced by students during EPICUR courses. Each episode discusses a specific aspect of this engagement with colonial legacies, from anti-racist movements both in the UK and the US, the British exploitation of indigenous land rights in Canada, to possibly neo-colonial voluntary services abroad the repercussions of Brexit on the Caribbean.
