The British Academy has announced its Senior Research Fellowships for 2023, awarding over £500,000 to 11 “outstanding academics” working in the SHAPE disciplines (Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts for People and the Economy/Environment). These fellowships are funded in partnership with the Leverhulme Trust and other non-government sources, providing one year of research leave for established scholars to complete often career-defining projects.
Among the recipients is Professor Diamond Ashiagbor who has been awarded the Fellowship for her project “Reconceptualising Labour Law: Race, Legal Form and the Legacies of Colonialism”. This project aims to learn from the colonial past of work, placing race at the centre of the contemporary labour contract. Her research will examine ways in which race, racism and the legacies of colonialism are implicated in the emergence of paid work, in the forms of law regulating transitions from slavery to indenture to ‘free’ labour, in the construction of the post-war welfare state, and in the law regulating modern labour markets.
Professor Ashiagbor said: “I am delighted to have been awarded this Fellowship, and to have the significance of research on race and colonialism recognised by the British Academy. The Fellowship will allow me to develop a transformative reconceptualisation of the discipline of labour law. Understanding how race and racism operate as a dominant rationality – to structure societal institutions such as the contract of employment, and the post-war welfare state – will enable us to track continuities between racial inequalities in the contemporary labour market and the legacies of colonialism”.