People

Liz Fekete

Liz Fekete is Director of the Institute of Race Relations, head of its European Research Programme and an Advisory Editor of Race & Class. She is the author of A suitable enemy: racism, migration and Islamophobia in Europe (Pluto press, 2009) and Europe’s Fault Lines: racism and the rise of the Right (Verso, 2018) which won the Bread and Roses award for Radical Publishing 2019 . Liz was part of the CARF Collective, and an expert witness at the Basso Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) on asylum and the World Tribunal on Iraq. She was a member of the Steering Group of the 2018 London hearing of the PPT on the rights of migrants and refugees which examined the legal infrastructure of the ‘hostile environment’. To contact please complete the form and mark FAO Liz.

Jenny Bourne

Editor of Race & Class, (voluntary role) and member of IRR’s Council of Management. She has worked in a variety of different roles for the IRR since 1970 and has carried out research on race relations policy since the 1960s, institutional racism and the relationship between her Jewish identity, feminism and anti-racist praxis. She is also curating the legacy derived from A. Sivanandan’s long political career. To contact please complete the form and mark FAO Jenny for matters relating to Race & Class, research on the history of race relations in the UK or the work of A. Sivanandan.

Anya Edmond-Pettitt

Company Secretary and Researcher. Anya plays administrative and research roles at the IRR, managing the charity and the Black History Collection. She has long experience of working in the voluntary sector, is fluent in French and holds a history degree and MA in Transnational Studies, with a focus on European colonial migration. Anya carries out research on issues of migration and asylum for IRR, recently contributing to ‘Humanitarianism: the unacceptable face of solidarity’ and IRR’s co-authored ‘Deadly Crossings and the militarisation of Britain’s borders’. She heads up IRR’s engagement with the migration sector and is a member of the Crossborder Forum. To contact please complete the form and mark FAO Anya.

Sophia Siddiqui

Deputy Editor of Race & Class. As a leading voice on anti-racist feminism, Sophia writes and lectures widely on race, gender and migration in the UK and Europe and has assisted trade unions, feminist organisations and universities in developing an intersectional approach. Her article on ‘Reproductive Racism’ was published in Race & Class and she has contributed a chapter to Anti-racism in Modern Britain (Manchester University Press, forthcoming) and is one of fourteen progressive feminists to be interviewed in Left Feminisms: conversations on the personal and political (Lawrence Wishart, 2023). Sophia is on the expert advisory panel of APPEAL’s research project on non-unanimous jury verdicts and racial justice. To contact please complete the form and mark FAO Sophia.

Jessica Perera

Researcher on the UK programme. Jessica works part time at IRR, researching issues related to poverty and inequality in multiracial working-class communities, while undertaking a DPhil at the University of Oxford. Jessica is the author of two IRR reports The London Clearances: Race, Housing and Policing and How Black Working-class Youth are Criminalised and Excluded in the English School System. She works closely with Black Learning Achievement and Mental Health (BLAM UK). To contact please complete the form and mark FAO Jessica Perera.

Kaiisha Kukendra

Communications Coordinator. Kaiisha supports the Institute’s work across communications and its Race & Class journal. She has worked within the charity sector in communications and advocacy for grassroots organisations such as NSUN (National Survivor User Network), Hackney Migrant Centre, and in the past volunteered and contributed to IRR News. Kaiisha is interested in highlighting the impact of racial and gendered state violence and surveillance on marginalised communities and finding alternatives for care and support in transformative justice and mutual aid. To contact please complete the form and mark FAO Kaiisha.

Arun Kundnani

Advisory Editor Race & Class. He is a researcher and writer on ‘race’, Islamophobia, political violence and radicalism and, most recently, author of What is antiracism (2023). He has for over two decades supported the work of IRR and Race & Class, on which he has earlier served as editor.

Hazel Waters

Advisory Editor Race & Class. She has retired from the IRR, where she has worked since 1969 as librarian and later editor of Race & Class, and acts in a voluntary capacity as an Advisory Editor.

Sophie Chauhan

Compiler IRR News Calendar of Racism and Resistance (voluntary role). A PhD student in Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonial Studies at University College, London, Sophie first joined us as a volunteer in March 2022. Having previously worked on the racial violence and employment sections of the calendar, she has now taken on the task of compiling and editing it. Curious Affinities, a collection of her prose and poetry has been published by Hajar Press. She is a member of the IRR’s Council of Management.

Barbora Černušáková

Research Associate (voluntary role). Barbora is a Hallsworth Fellow at the University of Manchester. She is carrying out long-term ethnographic research into debt in Roma working-class households in the Czech Republic and the way indebtedness is linked to the creation of a racialised surplus population and the production of a disciplined and cheap workforce. Barbora is a contributor to Race & Class and assisting the IRR in developing a research project on financial imperialism and racialised debt. She is a member of IRR’s Council of Management.

Dr Jon Burnett

Research Associate. Jon is a senior lecturer in Criminology at the University of Hull, where his research focuses on issues of carcerality, the political economies of work and punishment, state violence and racism. He is author of Work and the Carceral State (Pluto Press, 2022). Jon worked at IRR from 2011 to 2017, carrying out research on the ‘geographies of racism’ and ‘racial violence and the Brexit State’. He continues his relationship with the IRR, currently advising and developing a research project for IRR that examines charging and sentencing patterns in relation to the orchestrated racist violence in England and Northern Ireland of Summer 2024.

The late A. Sivanandan

He was founder editor of Race & Class, IRR Director from 1973-2013 and one of the foremost thinkers on racism, globalisation and black history in the UK. His books, Catching history on the wing and novel on Sri Lanka, When Memory Dies are available. To commemorate his work, Communities of Resistance was reissued in 2019 and a website about his work is available at https://asivanandan.com/.

A page of tributes to him is available here.