An Exhibit on Anti-colonial Print Culture

Launch of the Pelican House’s first exhibition in collaboration with MayDay Rooms and Revolutionary Papers.

April 9, 2025 Pelican House, 144 Cambridge Heath Rd, Bethnal Green, London. E1 5QJ.

An Exhibit on Anti-colonial Print Culture exhibits fabric prints of the covers of anti-colonial periodicals and materials from the MayDay Rooms archives, and kicking the exhibit off with a discussion between archivists from around the world and contemporary organisers active in anti-imperialist solidarity movements today.

Speakers and chair:

Mahvish Ahmad works on anticolonial periodicals and movement materials, the intellectual and political labour of movements targeted in repression, documentary practices in sites of disappearance, fugitive organising under conditions of war, and other material legacies of anti-colonial and left movements, especially in Balochistan and Pakistan. She’s a cofounder of Revolutionary Papers (with C. Morgenstern, K. Benson), Archives of the Disappeared (with M. Qato, Y. Navaro, C. Morgenstern), and Tanqeed (with M. Tahir). She’s also a UK-based trustee of the South Asian Research and Resource Centre, founded by Ahmad Salim. She’s an Assistant Professor of Human Rights and Politics and a Co-Director of LSE Human Rights at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Koni Benson is a historian, organiser, and educator. She is a lecturer in the Department of History at the University of the Western Cape. Her research focuses on collective interventions in histories of contested development and the mobilisation, demobilisation, and remobilisation of struggle history in southern Africa’s past and present. This involves working with various archives and coproducing life histories of self-organisation and unfolding political struggles of collective resistance against displacement and for access to land and public services (such as water, housing, and education) in South Africa.

Hana Morgenstern is a scholar, writer and translator of Middle Eastern literatures. She is an Associate Professor in Postcolonial and Middle Eastern Literature at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow at Newnham College. She currently co-convene the Revolutionary Papers and the Archives of the Disappeared research projects.

Shiraz Durrani is a British-Kenyan library science professional and author known for his contributions to the social and political dimensions of information and librarianship. His work often focuses on the intersection of information, politics, and liberation struggles, particularly in the context of Kenya and the broader anti-imperialist movement.

Tarun Gidwani is a research student in philosophy at King’s College London; specialising in the ethics of international trade. He is a part of the South Asia Solidarity Group in London and is engaged in political campaigns around climate justice, disability rights and healthcare

Ashraf Nabil of the Palestinian Youth Movement (“PYM”) a transnational, independent, grassroots movement of young Palestinians in Palestine and in exile worldwide as a result of the ongoing Zionist colonization and occupation of our homeland.

& A Speaker from MayDay Rooms