When given the opportunity to create a play to mark 75 years of Indian Independence from Colonial British Raj, I felt motivated by what this could inspire for new and ongoing conversations on the Partition […]
DSMN Media: The Impact of Social Media
DSMN Media colleagues Professor Janet Wilson, Professor Rajinder Dudrah and Dr David Simmons held a two-day online conference in 2022 for colleagues, researchers, academics and artists working in the creative media industries. Conversations on screen […]
A society that understands hidden abuse
“A group of toxic people come in different shapes and sizes. They can be a family, a group of church members, or a cluster of co-workers. One of the common themes of a toxic group […]
How Lohri went from a festival for women to a celebration of the son
For a long time now, Lohri has been considered the ‘son festival’ where celebrating the birth of a boy over the birth of a girl took precedent. Despite this sexist custom, historically and now in […]
Savitribai Phule: India’s first female teacher and headteacher was from a marginalised caste
Born 3rd January 1831 in Maharashtra in India, Savitribai Phule was a pioneering icon of the anti-caste movement and Indian feminism. Savitri was an educationist, social reformer, philanthropist, poet, anti-infanticide activist and liberationist. Her insurmountable […]
Let’s talk about loss
As the year 2021 comes to an end, we find ourselves battling through the new strain of Covid19, omicron. As we enter 2022 and continue to push through this global pandemic, it becomes difficult to […]
What the Sweet Bobby podcast tells us about a culture of abuse and silence
Wild. The one word so many have used on Twitter to describe the six-episode podcast Sweet Bobby. Downloaded over one million times online and listened to by a global audience, we all sat with bated […]
Student Life, Mental Health and Family Expectation
Amrit Kaur (better known as Jamz on social media) pens to paper her mental health journey. This is a student story of struggle, resilience, courage and success. In sharing this account we hope to encourage […]
Partition: The Lost Heer Project
Born in Delhi, India and now living in Canada, Harleen Singh is a historian and scholar working on the ‘Lost Heer Project’, a research venture uncovering hidden histories through the art of storytelling. He archives […]
Rupinder Kaur: Caste in Pataal Lok, Panjab and the Diaspora
Pataal Lok (2020) is a crime investigation Amazon Prime series produced by the Indian film actress Anushka Sharma. After its release, earlier this year, many Indians and diaspora Sikhs took to social media to air their […]
Mental Health & Down’s Syndrome
Baby Brain Memoirs I first started blogging as an outlet for making sense of my feelings that I can only describe as being alien to me at the time. I experienced this straight after the […]
Managing Mental Health in a Pandemic
Harpreet Sanghera is a team manager working for a leading organisation in mental health in the West Midlands. Her role comes with the responsibility of a nineteen member staff who are each responsible for the […]
Pamli weds Sarah: PS Love Wins
Pamli and Sarah are in a mixed race same-sex marriage. Sarah is British Irish Jamaican Turkish and Pamli is British Indian Punjabi. The two met in 2015 and married on the 12th of April in […]
The Diaspora Screen Media Network
The Diaspora Screen Media Network (DSMN) is a research project headed by Professor Janet Wilson (Principal Investigator), Professor Rajinder Dudrah (Co Investigator) and Dr David Simmons (Research Co-Ordinator). DSMN explores the new developments taking place […]
BCU Symposium: Sholay at 45
Following on from my blog on the iconic Bollywood film Sholay (1975), and the call for papers for the ‘Sholay at 45’ symposium at Birmingham City University (BCU), I share with all interested parties the full programme for the […]