The experiences, perceptions and maltreatment of Black European girls is a bourgeoning area of interest within academia,
with educators and activists continuing to highlight their mistreatment, pain and exclusion within the public sphere.
To supplement such work, it is important to acknowledge that the understandings and contemporary experiences of Black European girlhood
have a deep-rooted connection within Britain’s colonial history.
This paper explores the lives, resistance and definitions of enslaved Black girlhood within the nineteenth-century British Caribbean context.
Through analysis of colonial travel narratives and newspaper advertisements, it illustrates the ambiguity and malleability of enslaved Black girlhood
and the subsequent unique dangers it posed within their lives as a result.
In doing so, this paper also considers the ways in which the historical (re)presentations of, and violence inflicted upon, Black girls
may manifest within contemporary Black European Girlhood.
Reading Keisha Differently: Embodiment, Care, and Black British Girlhood
Speakers:
Jade LB, Academic Mentor, London Metropolitan University;
Rianna Raymond-Williams, PhD Candidate, Glasgow Caledonian University
This in-conversation segment uses Keisha the Sket as a critical and cultural lens to reframe Black girlhood within Black British contexts.
Keisha the Sket offers a rare archive of Black girlhood that sits outside respectability politics and mainstream narratives of victimhood
or hypersexualisation. Our conversation argues that Keisha’s story is not simply about sexual behaviour, but about how Black girls come to know,
manage, and survive within their bodies under conditions of racialised surveillance, misogynoir, and structural neglect.
Keisha’s bodily choices, risk-taking, and self-narration can be read as responses to unmet emotional needs, constrained care systems,
and a lack of safe spaces for vulnerability. Through this lens, embodiment becomes a site where mental health, trauma and desire intersect,
even when they are unnamed or pathologised by external observers.
For Black Britishness, Keisha the Sket exposes how Black girls are shaped by distinctly British institutions such as schools,
social services, youth culture, and media moral panics. It reveals how Black British identity is formed not only through culture and belonging,
but through exclusion, misrecognition, and survival strategies that are often criminalised or erased. We ask what it means to centre Black girls
as knowers of their own bodies and experiences, rather than objects of intervention.
Ultimately, this conversation invites a reframing of Black girlhood that recognises embodiment as complex, adaptive, and deeply political.
By listening differently to stories like Keisha’s, we open up more expansive understandings of care, health, and Black British futures
that are rooted in honesty rather than control.
Rendered Invisible: Black British Girlhood, ME/CFS and Neurodivergence
Speaker:
Dr Silhouette Bushay, Founder and Director, Black Girl Streams C.I.C., Senior Lecturer and Course Lead, University of East London
Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) (otherwise known as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS)) is a devasting multisystem chronic illness
that affects the lives of a sizable amount of people in the UK – it is also a misunderstood, misrepresented and underfunded area of research.
Black girls with ME (BgwME) are missing from health and disability justice, racial justice, Black health and Black girlhood spaces and discourse.
Therefore, this workshop employs composite storytelling and a reflexive analytical approach engaging with BgwME and differences, especially neurodivergence,
to bring to the fore structural absences for advocacy, policy, practice and research.
Participants will identify gaps, priorities and intersections across health, disability, education and social care and other considerations
to collectively generate insights regarding BgwME, including consideration of those who may also be neurodivergent (and have other differences)
through guided and structured reflections.
This collective reflexive session will contribute towards ongoing research and public engagement with this under-researched, underfunded, silenced,
and neglected social group and area of research.
1st Day’s Lesson, and Horizon
Speaker / Spoken Word Poet:
Abíọ́dún 'Abbey' Abdul, SFHEA, Academic English Skills Lecturer, Doctoral Researcher,
Creative Writer, Performance Poet, University of Nottingham / Yorùbá Yonder
1st Day’s Lesson
1st Day’s Lesson tells of a young child’s yet unknown struggles with systemic bias in education,
navigating prejudiced school cultures also reflected in the wider school community.
The poem takes us on the child’s journey starting her first ever day of school,
passing by evidence of the bigger societal problems that result from hostile learning environments
beyond her young perception.
The poetic journey ends as the child climbs the school steps which will determine her future prospects
according to how she “expands” her mind.
Horizon
Horizon tells of a child’s unexpected struggles with identity between her family’s Yorùbá home
and the wider British community. Loving and respecting all God’s children is mismatched with the racist attitudes
beyond her home causing deep distress, and eventually provoking unapologetic pushback.
The poem then navigates to her realignment of identity, recalibrating her sense of belonging,
and rediscovering God’s love within her roots beyond the horizon.
Autistic Masking and Intersectionality: Black Autistic Girlhood in UK Schools
Speaker:
Dr Tiffany Nelson, Child, Community and Educational Psychologist and Organisational Consultant, Marie Li Psychology Ltd
Black autistic girls often navigate school spaces where their identities are misunderstood.
This presentation presents published research that explores how autistic masking intersects with race and gender
in the lives of Black girls within UK education.
Autistic masking (strategies to hide neurodivergent traits) often becomes a survival mechanism in environments
shaped by racism, ableism, and misogynoir.
Through an intersectional lens informed by Disability Critical Race Theory and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis,
this research centres the voices of Black autistic girls, revealing how systemic biases and cultural expectations fracture belonging
and misinterpret difference using negative stereotypes.
These narratives challenge dominant discourses that pathologise Black girlhood and expose the mental health toll of masking.
The session will share lived experiences and offer practical recommendations for educators and psychologists
to create environments where Black autistic girls are accepted as they are, valued holistically,
without pressure to mask or change themselves to survive.
These recommendations focus on culturally responsive, neuro-affirming practices that foster belonging
and empower Black autistic girls to thrive authentically.
This presentation reflects on the tension of working within safeguarding systems that prioritise risk management
while attempting to meet the complex needs of Black girls experiencing neurodivergence, trauma, violence, and exploitation.
Drawing on over ten years of commissioned practice, including leading the UK’s first specialist supported accommodation
for Black looked-after girls and care leavers, the presentation explores how girls are often seen primarily as “risk”
rather than as young people with unmet regulation and mental health needs.
While specialist, trauma-informed services strive to offer care and containment, legal and structural limits within supported accommodation
can mean that escalating need cannot always be safely held.
The presentation introduces masked neurodivergence as a safeguarding blind spot and invites dialogue on how systems might better bridge the gap
between care, capacity, and protection for Black girls.
As a stereotypical 90s kid, I grew up in front of the television screen.
My early fondness of and curiosity about the characters and their relationships did not stop me from being keenly aware
that there always seemed to be something missing, or rather, someone.
The focus of this presentation will be to explore and determine the impact that media representations of Black disabled womanhood
have had on UK-based Black disabled women and gender-marginalised people.
My research examines whether UK-based Black disabled women think there is a lack of media representation of Black disabled womanhood.
Furthermore, if there is thought to be a lack, how this lack informs their sense of self and community.
Through the exploration of gender, disability and race, it will be shown how Black disabled girlhood and Black disabled womanhood
is represented through the media and experienced from either side of the screen.
Photo description (alt text): A close up of Jumoke smiling with a loc'd shoulder length bob.
She is wearing a bright orange dress under a light jean jacket.
Closing Reflection
Speaker:
Mackayla Forde (RED MEDUSA)
Poetic-Academic, LISS-DTP PhD Candidate, Queen Mary, University of London.
Closing the symposium, Mackayla Forde will weave together reflections on disability, neurodivergence and health in Black girlhood
through a decolonial lens grounded in the collective imaginary.
Drawing on what has been heard, witnessed and learned throughout the day, she will consider how Black girls’ sensory,
cognitive and embodied realities demand more than accommodation; they call for structural transformation.
Her address will centre self-definition, community care and epistemic authority as practices of resistance and world-making.
Delegates will be invited to leave not only informed, but activated and encouraged to use their power to shape systems
in ways that honour their lives as Black, disabled, neurodivergent girls and women.
