Speaker Biographies:
Alan Kunna was born and grew up in Whitechapel. He studied history at university where he focused on the role and impact of colonial government on African society and politics. He later pursued a career in teaching and taught English in Sudan, Italy and history in a variety of London colleges. His mother’s family lived on Cable Street from the late 1920’s until 1970. He credits his mother with being his first and most inspiring history teacher as her vivid recollections of the difficult conditions of her early life and her eyewitness accounts of the Battle of Cable Street and the Blitz gave him a life long interest in the subject.
Asif Shakoor is an independent scholar and authority on Lascar heritage. He is the author of a forthcoming book, Unearthing Invisible Seafaring Histories of Empire, and writes for the Port Towns & Urban Cultures website, University of Portsmouth. He helped research the Maritime Archaeology Trust's booklet on BAME seafarers in WWI, The Lascar Research Project at Glasgow Life Museums, a digitisation project on Cooks Certificates for Indian seamen at the National Maritime Museum, and the Mariners: Religion, race and empire in British ports, 1801-1914 project at the University of Bristol.
Tosin's practice is sculptural, supported by cinema and workshops as forms of research. Through film and archival materials, he investigates how histories are constructed and remembered, and through workshops he finds the forms that inform his sculptures and drawings.
Georgie Wemyss co-directs the research Centre for Migration, Refugees and Belonging at the University of East London. She has been facilitating walks and conversations focusing on the invisible histories of the East India Docks and south Asian seafarer histories with community groups and students for over two decades.