Kieran Connell

Kieran Connell is an internationally acclaimed writer and historian.  His first book, Black Handsworth: Race in 1980s Britain (University of California Press, 2019) was shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society’s Whitfield Prize.  His second, Multicultural Britain: A People’s History (Hurst, 2024) drew on Connell’s upbringing in an ethnically-diverse neighbourhood of inner-city Birmingham to take readers on a journey through multicultural Britain’s past and present.  It was described as a “vividly compelling” (Fintan O’Toole), “essential reading” (Shrabani Basu) and “captivating” (Ziauddin Sardar).

Connell teaches history at Queen’s University Belfast.  A former Fulbright scholar, he has held visiting fellowships at New York University, Stanford University and the University of Queensland. Alongside his many academic essays, Connell contributes regularly to the Guardian, the Irish Times, the New Statesman, Hyphen Online, the Tablet, and other publications.  He has curated two major exhibitions, while in 2022 he researched, wrote and presented a three-part podcast for BBC Sounds on the experiences of asylum seekers in Belfast.