• Research Interests: Black Radical Imagination, Epistemology, Black Feminist Thought, Speculative Fiction, Spirituality, Uses of the Erotic and Desire, Decolonial Theory, Queer Theory, Gender Studies

PhD Researcher, University of Cambridge, St. Catharine’s College, Department of Sociology

 

Academic Profile

Melz completed their first degree in Philosophy and Politics at the University of Leeds and graduated from a masters in Social and Political Thought from the same University. Throughout their studies they have been actively committed to social justice work both within the University and beyond it, they served as the Education sabbatical officer at the University of Leeds and took on a number of key roles in the NUS and National student movement. Melz is also the Founder of the Free Black University, a new project aiming to offer radical education outside of the institution. They are an activist who has worked in a number of spaces such as Black Lives Matter UK, decolonising education, and trans visibility. They are a multifaceted artist and academic, their work explores the radical Black imagination and building transformative worlds both within and outside of themself. Melz always endeavours to take this radical, queer, decolonial, Black feminist analysis forward in all aspects of their life and work.

Phd Research Abstract

The Speculative, Sacred, and Erotic: Engaging the Radical Black Imagination to Shape Alternative Worlds

My thesis will primarily explore how epistemic paradigms can be shifted to offer alternative knowledges about the possibilities of social change and transformation. I will engage the Radical Black Imagination as my point of departure to begin exploring what exists beyond the rational and empirical.

My thesis is concerned with what possibilities are opened up when we give primary importance to the imagination that is limitless and unbound by the parameters of ‘Western’ science and the evidence-based model. The work will explore, but is not limited to, an analysis of the spiritual, speculation, and the erotic as valid and important epistemologies that allow us to conceive a different future.

Key research questions:

How are Black people engaging in a praxis of radical imagination and speculation about alternative futures?

How are the speculative, the spiritual, and the erotic important forms of knowledge production?