Directory of Research and Expertise

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Research Summary and Profile

Research interests:

Colonies & Colonization, emigration & immigration

Regions:

Caribbean

Languages:

	Spoken	Written
French	Good	-
Other	Good	-

Publication Details

Related publications/articles:

Date	Details
07-Sep-2024	When home is a hostile environment: voices of the Windrush Generation and their Descendants Journal articles This essay was published in Black Histories, Volume 1, Issue 1-2 on 9th July 2024 and is a reworking of a paper delivered at the annual Oral History Society's Conference in July 2022 on Home.  Drawing upon oral history recordings that have been produced as a part of a 3-year AHRC-funded oral history project—The Windrush Scandal in its Transnational and Commonwealth Context—this paper addresses the theme of “home” for members of the “Windrush Generation” by exploring their relationship to the British State, changing nationality and immigration legislation, and hostile environment policies. It will also explores how one activist has, through agency and narrative, made “home” a less hostile environment for the descendants of the Windrush Generation and for herself.
20-Feb-2018	Creole Chips: Short Fiction, Poetry, Drama and Essays 1937-1954: Fiction, Poetry and Articles by Edgar Mittelholzer Edited Book This compendium, collected and introduced by Juanita Cox, brings together the early, mostly Caribbean-based Mittelholzer: the strikingly speculative anti-capitalist novella, The Adding Machine; the wealth of short stories published in journals such as Bim, Kyk-over-Al, Caribia and broadcast on the BBC Caribbean Voices programme; his often witty plays and the poetry that shows Mittelholzer to have been a much more modernist voice than much of the Caribbean poetry of those years. In addition, this collection gives access to unpublished material, seen only by the most assiduous researcher, including essays that express Mittelholzer’s ideas about Caribbean writing and his philosophy of life. But beyond bringing a hidden, more rootedly Caribbean Mittelholzer into the light, Creole Chips and Other Writings offers a wealth of pleasurable and engrossing reading. There is a playful good humour that rather disappears from Mittelholzer’s later work, and the 24 short stories first collected here show that in this form, at this time, Mittelholzer had few rivals. Contemporary Caribbean writers have been establishing speculative fiction and the Gothic as new ways of exploring the complex realities of the region; Mittelholzer was there long before them. His work is full of ideas and psychological insights, but he never loses sight of his mission to tell good stories and entertain. This compendium contains: Fiction: Creole Chips, The Adding Machine. Short Stories: Miss Clarke is Dying, Something Fishy, Breakdown, Samlal, The Cruel Fate of Karl and Pierre, Jasmine and the Angels, West Indian Rights, The Pawpaw Tree, The Burglar, Tacama, We Know Not Whom to Mourn, Sorrow Dam and Mr Millbank, Mr Jones of Port of Spain, The Amiable Mr Britten, A Plague of Kindnesses, The Sibilant and Lost, Wedding Day, Portrait with a Background, Only a Ghost We’ll Need, Hurricane Season, Towards Martin’s Bay, Gerald, Heat in the Jungle, Herr Pfangle. Children's Story: Poolwana's Orchids.  Drama: The Sub-Committee, Before the Curtain Rose, Village in Guyana, Boarderline Buisness, The Twisted Man.  Poetry: Colonial Artist in War-time, Afternoon Reflections, Death in Prospect, Evening at Staubles, Epithalamium, Farewell to a Woman, For Better things, Just between us, Mazaruni Rocks, Poet Creating, Reality at Midday, Remembrances, To the Memory of Ken Johnson, Mood of February 11th 1940, Reality, For Me – the Backyard, Dove on Gasparee, In the Beginning – Now – and Then, Pitch-walk Mood, Meditations of a Man, Slightly Drunk, The Virgin, October 7th, Island Tints. Essays & Personal Writing: Of Casuarinas and Cliffs, Carnival Close-up, Christmas, Romantic Promenade, Van Batenberg of Berbice, Roger Mais, Literary Criticism and the Creative Writer, At 43, A Personal View of the World.

Research Projects & Supervisions

Research projects:

Details

The Windrush Scandal in a Transnational and Commonwealth Context This three-year research project seeks, for the first time, to produce a scholarly examination of the so-called ‘Windrush Scandal’ within a fully transnational framework, one that properly considers the agency of a wide variety of official and non-official actors from both sides of the Atlantic and the role of the post-colonial and Commonwealth contexts of international relations.  Those people from Commonwealth Caribbean states who arrived in the UK, before the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act came into force, generally had the right to enter and remain in Britain by virtue of being Citizens of the UK and Colonies (CUKC).  The project’s key objective is to develop a unique digital research resource of extended interviews on the national and diplomatic activism around the Windrush scandal, supported by digitized government documents from the British archives and Caribbean government records.  Oral and archival research methodologies will be combined to explore the links between the apparently distinct spheres of international diplomacy and community activism, providing insights into, on the one hand, unconventional methods of public diplomacy by Commonwealth representatives, and on the other the ways in which this international support enhanced and amplified the community-based campaigning and investigative reporting.  Exploring these links will provide the central, overarching focus of this project. The key outputs will be 60 oral history interviews which will be available electronically and a searchable database of existing oral history resources on the ‘Windrush generation’.  30 of the interviews will focus on the response of Caribbean governments and their representatives in London to the legal restrictions imposed on immigration to the UK from the Caribbean from the early 1960s, and the plight of those members of the diaspora community, whose right to remain in the UK was challenged by the British state.  The other 30 interviews will focus on members of the diaspora community, those who found themselves under threat of deportation or actually deported, and their supporters and legal and political representatives.  The interviews will explore the extent to which the complexities and ambiguities of the law governing nationality exacerbated confusion around competing notions of Caribbean and British identity and belonging.  They will seek to identify the extent to which members of the diaspora community were aware of changes to their rights and obligations brought about by successive acts of parliament from 1962, and the stages by which it became clear that significant numbers of people were having their right to remain in the UK challenged.  This oral history research will be supplemented by archival research in collections in the UK and the Caribbean.  Selected documents will be digitized and made available on the project website alongside the recordings of the interviews and supporting explanatory materials including a series of podcasts produced by the project team. In partnership with the Black Cultural Archives(Opens in new window) in Brixton, the team will seek to ensure the broadest possible dissemination, with a special seminar at the BCA for community activists on the project’s findings.  We will also stage a project ‘roadshow’ which will visit cities in the UK with significant Caribbean communities. We will also provide separate seminars aimed at the staff of the FCO, the Home Office and the Caribbean High Commissions in London.  We expect the research resources we produce to be widely used by academics and students producing undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations, and our podcasts will be aimed at those outside the academy, with one podcast specifically aimed at pupils taking the OCR History GCSE module ‘Migration to Britain, 1000-2010’.  Our articles for the British Library’s ‘Windrush Stories’ website(Opens in new window) will enable us to demonstrate the relevance of our project materials to a range of researchers and educators. The project’s team members are: Professor Philip Murphy, Principal Investigator, University of London(Opens in new window) Dr Rob Waters, Co-Investigator, Queen Mary University of London(Opens in new window) Dr Juanita Cox, Research Fellow, University of London(Opens in new window) Dr Eve Hayes de Kalaf, Research Fellow, University of London

Professional Affiliations

Professional affiliations:

Name	Activity
Oral History Society	Advising on Diversity, Strategy and Migration
Guyana University Foundation	Building relations between the University of Guyana and its alumni in Britain.

Collaborations:

Name	Type	Activity	Start date	End date
In the Grip of Change: The Caribbean and its British Diaspora	Senate House Library & Institute of Historical Research	Exhibition	07-Jan-2024	31-Mar-2025
In the Grip of Change: The Caribbean and its British Diaspora	Senate House Library & Institute of Historical Research	Exhibition	01/	31-Mar-2025

Relevant Events

Related events:

Date	Details
09-Jul-2022	Annual Conference 'When Home is an Hostile Environment: Voices of the Windrush Generation and Their Descendants.' This 45 minute paper was delivered at the Annual Oral HIstory Conference for this year's theme of 'Home'.   To listen to the recording via the attached link you will need to input the code: OHSHomeReplay68
25-Feb-2022	2021 Highland Book Prize Long List Series Conversation: David Alston in Conversation with Juanita Cox Conversation with David Alston about his book Slaves and Highlanders.
06-Dec-2021	Drive Time: Voice of Islam - Interview Invited by Nabeela Shah to talk about citizenship: privelege or right? for Drive Time: Voice of Islam
04-Nov-2021	Silenced Histories: Scotland and the Caribbean In this recorded National Library of Scotland event, David Alston discusses his new book, 'Slaves and Highlanders', with Juanita Cox of Guyana SPEAKS and the ICwS.
28-Oct-2021	Ain't I a Woman: Black Women in an Historical and Contemporary Context (Day 2) This online conference spotlighted academic research and publications which enhance our understanding and provide fresh insight into the lives of phenomenal Black Women through the ages. Celebrated inspirational keynote and headline speakers enriched this event. The Black woman have too often been ignored and rendered invisible from public discourse even when issues directly impact their lives. This event, rganised by three Black female historians: Dr Angelina Osborne, Dr Juanita Cox, Dr Elizabeth Williams, shone a light, acknowledged, critically assessed, and elevated the varied contributions of Black women to the lived experience of humanity. Keynote speakers were: Prof Olivette Otele Professor of the History of Slavery-Bristol University, Colleen Amos OBE, CEO-Amos Bursary, Stella Dadzie, Feminist and Intellectual Headline interviews offered by: Margaret Busby OBE (Editor, Writer, Broadcaster, Publisher), Sisonke Msimang (Author, Intellectual ‘The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela’ 2018), Pascale Lamche (Producer, Director, Film ‘Winnie’ 2017)
27-Oct-2021	Ain't I a Woman: Black Women in an Historical and Contemporary Context (Day 1) This online conference spotlighted academic research and publications which enhance our understanding and provide fresh insight into the lives of phenomenal Black Women through the ages. Celebrated inspirational keynote and headline speakers enriched this event. The Black woman have too often been ignored and rendered invisible from public discourse even when issues directly impact their lives. This event, rganised by three Black female historians: Dr Angelina Osborne, Dr Juanita Cox, Dr Elizabeth Williams, shone a light, acknowledged, critically assessed, and elevated the varied contributions of Black women to the lived experience of humanity. Keynote speakers were: Prof Olivette Otele Professor of the History of Slavery-Bristol University, Colleen Amos OBE, CEO-Amos Bursary, Stella Dadzie, Feminist and Intellectual Headline interviews offered by: Margaret Busby OBE (Editor, Writer, Broadcaster, Publisher), Sisonke Msimang (Author, Intellectual ‘The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela’ 2018), Pascale Lamche (Producer, Director, Film ‘Winnie’ 2017)
21-Oct-2021	The Legacies of the 1962-1971 Immigration Acts: Historians and Lawyers in Conversation Participants: Nadine El-Nany, Colin Yeo, Ian Patel, Niamh Quille, Rachel Okello, Philip Murphy, Rob Waters & Juanita Cox
	Windrush Scandal: Failures and Ethics of Leadership Workshop at the Black Cultural Archives with Callum Watts and Ayshah Johnston

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