Marai Larasi is the fourth lecturer of the RIKK – Institute for Gender, Equality and Difference at the University of Iceland lecture series on decolonialism in spring 2023. Her lecture is titled ““Time Travel” as Liberation Strategy. Reflections on Decoloniality, Memory and Black Feminist Imagination” and will be held at 12–13 on Wednesday 15 March, at the National Museum of Iceland.

Decolonization is a generative and prefigurative process whereby we create the conditions in which we want to live and the social relations we wish to have—for ourselves and everyone else.

Harsha Walia, 2013

In this lecture Marai Larasi will examine some of the ways that colonisation, and in particular, the European colonial project has shaped our current feminist realities, including much of our understanding of who is rightfully ‘human’. This lecture will be a conversation in decolonisation as memory, reflection, imagination, and practice. Marai Larasi will invoke the idea of ‘Black Feminist Time Travel’, as a strategy for survival, emancipation and thrivance, while asserting that decolonisation is a requirement of any feminist efforts which are invested in our collective liberation. This lecture will therefore also be an invitation to listeners to explore their own positionalities, imaginations and navigation strategies. Questions and reflections will include: How do we begin to attend to the widespread injustices that persist, for example, as a result of the violence of Transatlantic Slave Trade? How do we make space in our movements for grief, restoration and repair? What is the world that we are dreaming?

Professor Marai Larasi is a Black, African-Caribbean-British feminist advocate, community organiser and consultant who has worked in social justice for over twenty-seven years. Till May 2019 she was the Executive Director of Imkaan (UK), and she also been Co-Chair of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, UK. Her work has included, and been framed, by alliances with other Black/Global Majority and Indigenous feminist activists and practitioners in diverse contexts. In her current practice she works across a number of spheres / sectors (women’s sector, international ‘development’, donors and foundations, regional government, and intergovernmental bodies), providing strategic, policy, practice and training support around decoloniality, intersectionality, racial justice and ending violence against women and girls among other areas. She is also a member of Project Tallawah, an emerging Black Feminist collective.

Further information on the lecture series can be found on RIKK’s website – rikk.hi.is – and the institute’s Facebook-page. The lecture series is organised with the cooperation of the National Museum of Iceland. A recording of the lecture will be made available on RIKK‘s website.

Due to technical difficulties there is no recording of the lecture.