In the last week of July 2019, Liberal Arts teamed up with Politics and Sociology to deliver a Warwick Sutton Trust Summer School on the theme of “The Colonial Hangover”. The Colonial Hangover project was established by colleagues in Politics and International Studies to work with students to pose questions about the hidden legacies of Empire in everyday life, and we were keen to collaborate!

Workshops covered topics such as the question of reparations, public memory and memorialisation, boundaries and belonging, securitisation, and cultural legacies. Dr Kirsten Harris’s session – “Should Walt Whitman be #Cancelled” – considered the American poet Walt Whitman as a case study for wider questions around race and the consumption of culture. Over the week, students produced zines to showcase their research and responses.

With a particular emphasis on education, the Sutton Trust fights for social mobility from birth to the workplace so that every young person – no matter who their parents are, what school they go to, or where they live – has the chance to succeed in life.