In the context of the Absence/Presence exhibition (1st-29th Sept), installed in the Chapel of Industry, looking out on to the city, this panel reflects on the groundings of this cathedral, of the planetary relations to stone and soil, as well as those who toiled for it with their skills, whilst so often sitting on the sidelines and shadows of the established stories. The migration of ideas, people and materials are very much part of the building of Coventry cathedral. Basil Spence, the architect of the cathedral, was born in India due to empire, workers from the empire, as well as refugees and displaced persons from Europe and local people contributed to the building of the cathedral. The panel opens a contact zone for courageous conversations. Absence/Presence is an invitation to participate in the making of a living heritage with stories sitting outside the usual frames of reference.
Event Details
Date: 19 September 2025
Time: 6:00pm to 8:00pm
Tickets: Free (please book in advance)
Funded by the West Midlands Racial Justice Initiative
Speaker Information
Professor Nirmal Puwar
This event is part of Professor Nirmal Puwar's, British Academy Innovation Fellowship (2023-25) on 'Multicultural Lives in the Civic Life of a Cathedral'. Fellowship as camaraderie, facilitation, invitation and creative collaboration has been central to her research process. She has co-organised several events, especially with the Food Union/Pod and also worked with the specialism of her guests on her podcast series Hear Here, generating an experimental indexicality of relationships, with threaded connections to the cathedral as a living heritage archive.
Professor Puwar has been an academic at Goldsmiths University since 2004. Her classic book Space Invaders: race, gender and bodies out of place (2004), has been re-visited for a 20th anniversary issue. Live Methods (2013, co-edited with Les Back) has just been re-visited in an anniversary issue. Her work is translated and presented internationally. She is Co-Director of the Centre for Feminist Research and Co-Convenor of the MA Gender, Media, Culture. Puwar is an incessant connector, seeking contact zones of exchange with and beyond academia, with her expertise in creative methods and spatial practice. She co-founded the Methods Lab at Goldsmiths, in 2005.
Monika D Brown
Monica D. Brown is a Project Manager at Warwickshire Record Office, Media Specialist, Journalist, Corporate Trainer and writer who was born in Birmingham, UK. The daughter of Windrush generation parents, Iciline and Gersham Brown, she grew up in Warwickshire, UK, Clarendon and Kingston, Jamaica. She is a graduate of: U.W.I., Mona, where she studied Mass Communication, French and Literature, Warwickshire College, University of Warwick and U.C.E./Birmingham City University, ( M.A. Distinction).
In 1984 she received a French government scholarship to study Television Production in Paris. Upon her return to Jamaica she was the first Television Producer/ Director of one of Jamaica’s longest running television programmes, Hill an’ Gully Ride, which is still on air. Following a full time career in national Radio broadcasting she taught Media production at University and in 2002 received a Distinguished Faculty Award from Northern Caribbean University.
In 2007, the BBC selected Monica among six others across the UK, to explore their family history. The DNA test results inspired family journeys to Tanzania and Zanzibar in 2009 and 2016 in search of Tanzanian roots. Monica’s book, Journey back to Zanzibar, a loosely autobiographical anthology, traces Monica’s journey, in part, back to Zanzibar. The anthology was translated into Swahili, ‘Safari Kuelekea Tena Unguja’ in 2016 by THE LANGUAGE SHOP, N.Y. Monica is currently working on a collection of post Windrush short stories, ‘Going to England’.
In November 2013, Monica was selected for a Callaloo Writing Fellowship at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is also a speaker and offers Communications Coaching and Media Engagement Training for Companies, Charities and individuals
Holly Cooper
Holly Cooper (they/them) is a DPhil History student at the University of Oxford, who, under the supervision of Dr. Meleisa Ono-George and Dr. Chantelle Jessica Lewis, is working on a community grounded thesis of the Black Caribbean community in Coventry. Prior to this, Cooper had completed their History BA (Hons) at the University of Lincoln (2020), and the Black British History MA at Goldsmiths, University of London (2022).
Over the last five years, they have undertaken several different research roles, surrounding archival recovery, reparatory justice, educational reform, community education, and the legacies of the British Empire. More recently, Cooper has become a Director of a newly establish community interest company (CIC), the Black Historians Network UK; the objective of which is to support Black, Caribbean, and/or African historians and communities in Britain by nurturing a network to support and encourage further entry into the study of Black history, while advocating for the legitimacy of the field in Britain. The network is an outcome of a ISRF-funded project, on which Cooper was a Co-I.
Cooper is an active trade unionist, as the University of Oxford UCU Equality Officer (2023 – 2025) and the ‘Young Workers’ seat holder on the TUC LGBT+ Committee (2023 – 2025). They are also invested in grassroots community building, as the facilitator of Queer Kinship Coventry, a community organisation for Black and Global Majority LGBTQ+ people in the city, as well as being an organiser with another Coventry organisation, the ArawaK Community Trust.
