past events

Reflections on January’s screening of Blueberry Soup

CRaB postgraduate researcher Carlus Hudson has written the following reflections on the screening of Blueberry Soup which was hosted by CRaB earlier this year. Blueberry Soup: How Iceland changed the way we think about the world On 10th January, CRaB was joined by documentary-maker Eileen Jerrett for a screening of her film Blueberry Soup. Blueberry Soup follows the stories of Icelandic people who have taken their country’s future into their own hands and sought to rewrite the constitution. Iceland was hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis: its economy shrunk by 10% and unemployment tripled. The largest protests in Iceland’s

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‘Liberate my degree’ event

A report by CRaB member and postgraduate researcher Carlus Hudson. On March 16th, University of Portsmouth Student Union hosted a panel event “Liberate My Degree”. It brought students, academics and activists together as part of wider National Union of Students campaigns on the BAME attainment gap in higher education and lack of diversity in university curricula. This event continued the union’s “Race in Your Face” campaign from last academic year that highlighted ways in which communities perpetuate racial prejudice and discrimination. Members of the panel were Aadam Muuse (Black Students’ Officer – National Union of Students), Dr. Olivia Rutazibwa (Senior

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CRaB Seminar: Reality or pretence: statelessness, nationality and organised hypocrisy

On Thursday 26th January, Dr Isabelle Cheng of the University of Portsmouth’s School of Language and Area Studies gave a talk about the notion of national sovereignty as an ‘organised hypocrisy’ (Krasner 1999). Isabelle discussed migrants, mostly women, who marry Taiwanese residents needing to surrender their existing citizenship if they are to obtain residency in Taiwan. Whilst this is not a unique situation, what renders it particularly remarkable is the lack of international recognition for Taiwan as a state (and therefore of any kind of Taiwanese citizenship). Such migrants therefore become, in effect, stateless. As the creation of statelessness for individuals is prohibited

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