Liverpool is home to one of the oldest and largest Black British communities. The city itself has a chequered history as Britain’s largest slave port with a legacy of conflicted race relations.  As one of the most important port cities of the Atlantic world, Liverpool grew financially rich on the proceeds. But the city has also been enriched culturally through the role it has played in forming and framing black communities throughout the diaspora. Liverpool has itself been shaped by the cultures of this diaspora. The city’s rich musical culture (formed in part from African American roots) and vernacular energy give a unique and dynamic quality to discussions about cultural creativity. Its rich heritage, together with the vibrancy and malleability of Liverpool, have led CAAR to hold its 11th biannual conference on “Mobilising Memory: Creating African Atlantic Identities” at Liverpool Hope University.

Topics to include: Historic black communities; Travel Narratives; Museums and Memory; African Atlantic Tourism; Travelling Abolitionists and Civil Rights Activists; Travel Narratives and Memories of Exile; Slave Memorials and Memorialisation; Musical Heritages; History, Memory and Forgetting; Transnational African American Writing; the Visual Arts; Counter or Guerrilla Memorialisation; Folklore and Collective Memory; Gender and Intersecting Identities.

Selected papers from the Conference will be published in a special edition of CAAR’s FORECAAST Series (Liverpool University Press).