Name: Kenan Malik: How the British Working Class Became White
Start: 2026-02-10T18:00:00+00:00
End: 2026-02-10T19:30:00+00:00
Location: G.07 Informatics Forum, The University of Edinburgh

Kenan Malik: How the British Working Class Became White

Join Kenan Malik—writer, Observer columnist and BBC broadcaster—for a lecture exploring the history of class, race, and identity in Britain.
About this Event

Kenan Malik: How the British Working Class Became White

Join Kenan Malik—writer, Observer columnist and BBC broadcaster—for a lecture exploring the tangled history of class, race, and identity in modern Britain.

Malik is the author of Not So Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics, praised by Paul Gilroy as "a precious provocation" that "unsettles the absurdities, pieties and default settings of contemporary race-talk." A veteran of anti-racist activism in 1980s Britain, he brings both scholarly depth and lived experience to one of our most contested debates.

The talk is co-hosted by the ERC/UKRI project Class Struggle in Greek Democracy and by the School of History, Classics and Archaeology as part of The Class Series.

About the speaker:

Kenan Malik presents Analysis on BBC Radio 4 and writes a weekly column for the Observer. His books include: Not So Black and White, The Quest for a Moral Compass and From Fatwa to Jihad, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize.