Honorary Patrons
Uma Mesthrie
Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie, the great granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi, has worked at the University of Durban-Westville, University of Cape Town and is currently Senior Professor of History at the University of the Western Cape.
Uma is recognised as a leading scholar in the field of India-South Africa connected histories. She has expert knowledge on forced removals and land restitution in Cape Town and has written specifically on marginalised communities such as the Black River community. Among her many publications is Gandhi’s Prisoner? The Life of Gandhi’s son Manilal (first published in 2004).
Her most recent articles include ‘The Desirable and Undesirable in the life of the Chief Immigration Officer in Cape Town, Clarence Wilfred Cousins, 1905–1915’ (Itinerario - European Journal of Overseas History, April 2018).
Patricia Rodney
Dr Patricia Rodney has lived and worked in Guyana, England, Tanzania, Barbados, Canada and the USA. In 1995 Dr. Rodney took up an academic appointment as Assistant Professor and Deputy Director of the Master of Public Health Program at Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) in Atlanta, GA. During her 15-year tenure at MSM she was promoted to Professor, Assistant Dean for Public Health Education, and Director, Master in Public Health Program in the Department of Community Health & Preventive Medicine. In December 2010, Dr. Rodney retired from MSM and established Partners in Health, Education And Development (PHEAD), an international development consultancy organization.
Dr. Rodney is also the CEO of The Walter Rodney Foundation (WRF). The WRF is committed to sharing the life and works of Walter Rodney with students, scholars and community activists around the world.
Clare Short
Clare Short is a British Labour Party politician, born in Birmingham to Northern Irish Catholic parents. She was the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Ladywood from 1983 to 2010. Short was Secretary of State for International Development in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Tony Blair from 1997 until her resignation from that post in 2003. Her book, An Honourable Deception?: New Labour, Iraq, and the Misuse of Power, published in 2004, is an account of her career in New Labour, most notably her relationship with Prime Minister Tony Blair, the relationship between Blair and Gordon Brown and the build-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The book won Channel 4's Political Book of the Year Award for 2004.
Lord Parekh
Bhikhu Parekh was appointed a life peer in May 2000. He has taught at the London School of Economics, the University of Glasgow, and at the University of Hull. Between 1981 and 1984 Lord Parekh was appointed as Vice-Chancellor at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in India, and in 2002, he served as president of the Academy of Social Sciences in London.
As well as teaching, Lord Parekh has been committed to serving a number of charitable bodies concerned with issues relating to racial equality and multiculturalism. Between 1998 and 2000, Lord Parekh was the chairman of the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, which was set up to analyse the state of multi-ethnic Britain and propose ways of preventing racial discrimination. The report of the commission is often referred to as the “Parekh Report”, and has been the basis for many debates surrounding multiculturalism in the UK.
David Olusoga
David Adetayo Olusoga is a British Nigerian popular historian, writer, broadcaster, presenter, film-maker, and Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester. He has produced and presented many historical documentaries on the BBC, including The World's War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire (2014) about the Indian, African and Asian troops who fought in the First World War. He was Associate Producer of Coolies: How Britain reinvented slavery (BBC, 2002), and is an expert on military history, empire, race and slavery. He writes regularly for The Guardian, The Observer, New Statesman and BBC History Magazine.
His book, Black and British (2016) was described in the Sunday Times as a 'comprehensive and important history of black Britain… Written with a wonderful clarity of style and with great force and passion.' The Guardian described it as a 'radical reappraisal of the parameters of history, exposing lacunae in the nation’s version of its past.'
Tony Huq
Tony Huq worked at Ladypool Junior School in south Birmingham for twenty-two years, latterly as its head teacher, for which service he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1986. Huq was then head-hunted by the Bangladesh Government and asked to serve as its Ambassador to France and Spain. He occupied this diplomatic post from 1988 to 1991.
After a short interlude as education adviser for Birmingham Education Department he was recruited by UNESCO as its Senior Special Adviser for Asia and the Pacific, based in Paris, a job which he carried out from 1993 to 2001. While at UNESCO Huq played a major role in establishing International Mother Language Day (celebrated on 21 February each year). He holds Honorary Doctorates from the University of Birmingham and from Aston University.
Khal Torabully
Khal Torabully is a writer, poet and semiologist. He is the author of 25 books in French, English and Creole. He studied at Université Lumière of Lyon, France and is regarded as the pioneer of indenture studies, articulating History, the archives, anthropology and deconstructing discourses in the realm of the “coolie” trade. He worked on the emergence of a methodology enabling to fill a gap in postmodern and postcolonial studies through the paradigm of coolitude.
In 1992, he published Cale-d’étoiles-Coolitude (English translation in the USA in 2021), exploring the oceanic centrality of indenture, with a view of giving visbility to the Indian Ocean as a field of academic interest. Later, he developed the Kala Pani aesthetics, contradicting the view of the ocean as a space of ontological loss. Khal Torabully pointed to the core values of jahaji behen and bhai during the coolie voyage, laying the foundation of coolitude’s humanism of diversity. As a visionary, he also related slavery and indenture, an inclusive approach which was espoused by UNESCO in its site policies in Mauritius, through the Aapravasi Ghat and Le Morne. He thus devised the first theoretical frame of memorial negotiations between slavery and indenture.
With Dr Doudou Diene, Dr Torabully initiated the International Indenture Labour Route (IIRL), set on UNESCO's agenda in 2014. He did so at the formal request of the Aapravasi Ghat of Mauritius, the only world heritage indenture site in the world. His inclusive approach of indenture is contained in the premises of the IIRL.
Clive Myrie
Clive Myrie is a distinguished British journalist and news presenter, known for his captivating storytelling and insightful reporting. Myrie began his career with the BBC in 1987, quickly becoming a familiar face on international news broadcasts. His insightful coverage of major events, including the Gulf War, the Iraq War, and the Arab Spring, cemented his reputation as a trusted and respected voice in the media landscape.
Beyond his role as a journalist, Myrie has enriched the BBC with his contributions to various programmes and documentaries. His versatility has extended to hosting popular shows like "Have I Got News for You" and anchoring the long-running quiz show "Mastermind." Clive Myrie's passion for storytelling and his commitment to journalistic excellence continue to inspire and captivate audiences worldwide.
Former Honorary Patron
The Ameena Gafoor Institute was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Professor Brij Lal, on 25th December 2021. The Ameena Gafoor Institute and the University of Cambridge (Centre of South Asian Studies) have agreed to the setting up of a Memorial Lecture in honour of Professor Lal.
Brij Lal
Brij Vilash Lal is Emeritus Professor of The Australian National University and an Honorary Professor of the University of Queensland. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Humanities Academy in 1996. He is the author of Girmitiyas: The origins of the Fiji Indians which is now widely regarded as a foundational text of Indian indenture historiography, and General Editor of the widely lauded Encyclopaedia of the Indian Diaspora. His Mr Tulsi's Store: A Fijian journey was voted one of the Ten Notable Books of Asia-Paciifc for 2001 by the committee of the San Francisco-based Kiriyama Prize.
Lal condemned the military coup d'état which deposed the government of Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase on 5 December 2006. In 2009, Lal was expelled from Fiji by a Government hostile to his activism.