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Biography

Professor Robert Beckford joined the University of Winchester in 2021 as the Director of the Institute for Climate and Social Justice. Robert is an activist scholar, working interdisciplinarily to address, confront and overturn injustice in African mainland and diaspora communities. Robert’s scholarship takes place across a range of media. He has written eight monographs exploring the interface of religion, ethnicity, and social justice. His most recent work is an action-research project on decoloniality, music and theology (Decolonising Gospel Music: A Revolutionary Theopraxis, Bloomsbury 2022).

Robert is a BAFTA Award-winning documentary filmmaker. His films have contributed to increasing public awareness of issues of corporate malfeasance in Africa, the reparations movement and anti-racism in Britain. Robert’s most recent media projects are an independent film project funded by the Movement for Justice and Reconciliation (50k), exploring the meaning of reconciliation in response to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (‘After Noah: Christianity, Slavery and Reconciliation 2022’). Also a BBC World Service documentary on the environmental impact of colonialism on Barbados (2022).

Robert is currently involved in a range of Research and Knowledge Exchange projects, including a hip-hop/rap music-inspired sustainability resource for Key Stage 1 Geography and a series of religious icons titled 'Our Lady of Climate Justice.' 

In 2021, Robert completed a three-year collaborative £600,000 ESRC research project on ‘Austerity Britain’ with the University of Coventry (‘Life on the Breadline’). In autumn 2022 Robert hosted the first national symposium for global majority peoples in Britain advocating climate and social justice. In 2023, he turned a long-running family argument into a BBC Radio 4 series dealing with the experiences of the Caribbean immigrants who came to the UK as part of the Windrush Generation (read the press release).

Areas of expertise

Activism, Scholarship and the Arts

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