Forthcoming Event…
“I want my country back”: Cosmopolitanism, Multiculturalism and Brexit?
Friday 1st December 2017
5.30pm-7pm
Sheffield Hallam University
Cantor Building, Cantor Lecture Theatre 9130
Arundel Street
City Campus
S1 2NT
“I want my country back”: Cosmopolitanism, Multiculturalism and Brexit?
This talk will discuss contemporary issues around race, difference and culture in the context of debates about multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism and Brexit. The presentation will argue that multiculturalism was never about purely recognising diversity; it was about questioning national homogeneity and allowing minoritised groups to make claims and participate as equal citizens. Dr Ipek Demir will also link multiculturalism to cosmopolitanism. The latter is typically conceived and read as a critique of nationalism as a sign of openness and thus the normative defence of the idea of human capacity to expand the sphere of identification and belonging beyond national boundaries. The political backlash against both can help us situate some of the debates which arose during Brexit.
Dr Ipek Demir is Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Leicester. Her work sits at the intersections of the fields of diaspora studies, ethno-politics, race and identity, nationalism, indigeneity, global politics as well as social and critical thought and interdisciplinarity. She has also carried out empirical research on Kurdish and Turkish diasporas, funded by an AHRC fellowship. She is the founder and co-coordinator of British Sociological Association’s Diaspora, Migration and Transnationalism Study Group and the former Vice-Chair of European Sociological Association’s Migration Research Network. Before joining Leicester she was a research fellow at the University of Cambridge, and also taught sociology and politics at the Open University, the Universities of of Sussex and Cambridge.
Places are limited and need to be booked in advance
Arrival from 17:30pm. The lecture will begin at 18:00 prompt.
Please have your tickets with you ready for check-in.