In our February event, Professor Keon West (Jamaica & Balliol 2006), in conversation with Klarkle Stricklen (Tennessee & Somerville 2022), will discuss his ground-breaking new book The Science of Racism: Everything you need to know but probably don’t – yet.

Please note that this edition of the Scholars’ Library will be held in a hybrid manner, both in person at Rhodes House and online.
Keon West is a Professor of Social Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the President of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. He has received numerous international awards for his research, teaching, media engagement and social activism. He has also appeared frequently as a psychological expert and presenter on a variety of international media platforms including the BBC World Service, BBC Radio 4, Channel 4 and The Guardian. He is especially well known for his research on prejudice, sexual orientation and sexual health. The Science of Racism is his second book.

In the ground-breaking The Science of Racism Professor Keon West cuts through the divisive anecdotes and rhetoric with decades’ worth of clear, factual, rigorous, quantitative science, to reveal truths about racism that are shocking and tragic, but also (somehow) funny and entertaining.

Klarke Stricklen is a writer and historian of 19th century slavery and abolition in the U.S. South and Caribbean. She is a second-year doctoral researcher in the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford, where her research focuses on the meanings and effects of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 in the colony of Jamaica. She is specifically interested in the role of gender and furthering the case for reparations. Prior to pursuing a doctoral degree, Klarke completed a Master of Studies in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Oxford.