Dr. Kennetta Perry

Biography

Kennetta Hammond Perry’s research examines Black diasporic communities' political formations shaped by imperial bordering in Britain. Her book, 'London Place Black Britons, Citizenship Politics Race' (Oxford, 2016), explores how the largely African Caribbean migrant community in Britain articulated claims to citizenship and publicly challenged the state to acknowledge and remedy ways anti-Black racism affected their lives, particularly in the decades following World War II. Currently, she is completing a manuscript examining the life, death, and legacy of David Oluwale, a Nigerian-born homeless man thought murdered by police in Leeds, England, in 1969. By drawing on Black feminist epistemologies, her study aims to contribute to burgeoning conversations in Black Studies and the discipline of History, ethically engaging with the historical record to demonstrate a duty of care in how Black lives are represented in archives often steeped in violence and disregard for Black humanity. Moreover, her book enlists the fraught historical record of David Oluwale’s existence in Britain to examine the life-depriving entanglements defining the relationship between the postwar welfare state and the carceral state, both past and present. Professor Perry previously held fellowships at the Carter G. Woodson Institute and the American Council of Learned Societies, and she is currently a co-investigator on an Arts & Humanities Research Council (UK) grant examining regional valences of 'Black Power' in the UK. She is also an honorary senior research fellow at the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, where she previously served as founding director.

Research Interests