Events

Past Events

South Asia Centre Lecture

As part of LSE's Colony as Empire series, Susheila Nasta gave a lecture on how Indians mingling in intellectual circles in London influenced British perspectives. She also provided an interview.

Bradford Literary Festival

Sun 17 May 2015, 4.30pm
The Midland Hotel, Conference Centre, Bradford

Susheila Nasta will appear at the Bradford Literary Festival to discuss the photographic history Asian Britain, a special issue of the literary magazine Wasafiri, as well as early South Asian writers and writing.

Write Idea Festival: Susheila Nasta & Florian Stadtler discuss Asian Britain

Sun 16 Nov 2014, 4pm
Lab 1a, Idea Store Whitechapel

Susheila Nasta and Florian Stadtler discussed the photographic history, and how South Asians have lived in Britain for centuries. 

Sharing the Forgotten Histories of South Asians in Britain

Wed 29 Oct 2014
Library of Birmingham, Centenary Square

Susheila Nasta, with the British Library’s lead curator for the India Office Records Penny Brook, presented a talk on ’Sharing the forgotten histories of South Asians in Britain’ for the Discovering Collections, Discovering Communities conference. The full presentation and slides are available to view online.   

BBC London News Interview Susheila Nasta

Mon 25 Nov 2013 

Project director Susheila Nasta was interviewed by BBC London News to discuss Asian Britain: A Photographic History, published in October 2013 by Westbourne Press. Take a look at the interview online. 

South Asian Literature Festival, Asian Britain: A Photographic History

Wed 23 Oct 2013, 18.30-19.45
University of Westminster
£5

Asian Britain: A Photographic History, published in October 2013 by Westbourne Press, vividly charts a long history of Asians in Britain. Author of the book Professor Susheila Nasta was in conversation with Dr Florian Stadtler, as well as BBC journalist and broadcaster Razia Iqbal. See South Asian Literature Festival for more information about the event.

Images from the South Asian Literature Festival Event

Susheila Nasta Interview BBC Asian Network

Tue 22 Oct 2013, 11.00-12.00

Project director Susheila Nasta was interviewed by BBC Asian Network to discuss Asian Britain: A Photographic History, published in October 2013 by Westbourne Press. 

Readers Research: Indians and Britain

Fri 15 Feb 2013, 18.45-20.00
Conference Centre, British Library
£4 / £3 concessions

Readers Research events are an opportunity to find out how researchers use the vast collections of the British Library.

Kate Smith, a Research Fellow on The East India Company at Home 1757-1857 project, examines the British country house in a global context. Here she reveals how Asian trading connections impacted on British material culture as company officials returned home with vast fortunes.

As part of the project Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad, Research Fellow Florian Stadtler and his colleagues used archival research to investigate how the early South Asian community positioned itself within British society and impacted on British life. They will be in conversation with Dr Susheila Nasta, Professor of Modern Literature, The Open University.

Follow this link for more information.

London's Radical South Asian Writers - Retro Style

Wednesday 3 October 2012, 6.45pm, Asia House, 63 New Cavendish Street, London W1G 7LP

A story detailing a terrorist’s mindset; anti-racist poetry; fiction about women’s oppression — what do all of these have in common? The fact that they were written by South Asian writers living in London in the interwar period of the twentieth century. The fight for equality and justice is not a new one, and writers such as Mulk Raj Anand, Attia Hosain and Cedric Dover believed in bringing this struggle – along with the one for independence – to the heart of Empire in the 1930s.

Join journalist and writer Bidisha, award-winning poet Daljit Nagra and novelist and broadcaster Shyama Perera as they read from some of the revolutionary work produced by these pioneers and discuss how their own writing follows in this radical – and little-known – tradition. Chaired by Susheila Nasta, editor of Wasafiri and the director of the Beyond the Frame and Making Britain projects.

After the event, the winners of Wasafiri’s fourth New Writing Prize will be announced. The award gives prizes to new writers in the categories of poetry, fiction and life writing. Judges for the 2012 Prize were writer and broadcaster Colin Grant, poet John Haynes and cultural journalist Maya Jaggi, chaired by Wasafiri editor Susheila Nasta. The New Writing Prize is open to entries from anywhere in the world and since it started there have been submissions from Argentina to Singapore, from Cameroon to New Zealand. Former winners have already gone on to publish books, win other prizes and more.

See Wasafiri's website for further information about the special issue 'Britain and India: Cross-cultural encounters', guest edited by Dr Florian Stadtler, and based on the project. Responses to the issue by writers Bidisha, Daljit Nagra and Shyama Perera can be accessed online.

Asian Bloomsbury

Panel discussion podcast available now

Listen to the Wasafiri panel discussion on Asian Bloomsbury with Professor Susheila Nasta and Dr Florian Stadler from the Beyond the Frame project, hosted by Director of Fiction Uncovered Sophie Rochester, and recorded live at Fiction Uncovered FM for Fiction Uncovered 2012. This is now available free on iTunes (Item 44).

Beyond the Frame was pleased to announce the following event as part of the London Literature Festival:

Walking tour, Sunday, 8 July, 12.00, Southbank Centre

Bloomsbury, the bohemian hub of early twentieth-century moderns, was criss-crossed at its heart by the presence of India. South Asian artists, writers and publishers were familiar faces on its streets, amongst them M.J. Tambimuttu, editor of Poetry London, and novelist and art critic, Mulk Raj Anand, founding-father of the Indian novel in English. Join writers Elleke Boehmer, Romesh Gunesekera, Susheila Nasta and Sukhdev Sandhu to discover more about Asian Bloomsbury and how these early writers and artists engaged with British culture, influencing contemporary global visions of modernity. The event will be preceded by a ‘Bloomsbury London’ walking tour, highlighting the material traces of the Asian presence and sites of British-Asian encounter. The walk was led by Alex Bubb of Oxford University.