Subira Joy. Image credit Jamie Boyt

Nat Arias

Earlier this year, the School of Media, Arts and Humanities welcomed Subira Joy as the 2024 Stuart Hall Fellow.

What is the Stuart Hall Fellowship?

The Stuart Hall Fellowship is a partnership between the Stuart Hall Foundation and the School of Media, Arts and Humanities, established in 2018. The Foundation is committed to promoting cultural diversity and understanding through the arts.

Each year as part of its pledge to support new artists, the Fellowship is awarded to a local artist to help develop their skills and gain valuable experience to work with academics in their chosen field.

As part of the partnership, the University of Sussex also offers opportunities to students including the Stuart Hall MA Scholarship with a tuition fee discount of £5,000 and two funded Stuart Hall Foundation PGR Studentships.

Subira Joy, 2024 Stuart Hall Fellow

Subira Joy is a Black, trans, queer spoken-word performer, writer and activist, based in Sussex. An interdisciplinary theatre maker interested in the role of art in activism and social change, their work ranges from spoken word to performance art, dance, playwriting, drag and cabaret.

As part of their fellowship, Subira will perform at this year’s Brighton Festival, on 22 May at an event called Radical Remembering, held at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts (ACCA).

Subira said:

“I'm keenly aware of the privileges that I'm afforded stepping back into the academic world with access to academic resources. The Stuart Hall Fellowship is a thrilling opportunity to nurture radical decolonial creative work and thought, and I'm excited to make the most of this!

“I've already been writing, researching, connecting, and dreaming, and I've got some great things brewing for the Radical Remembering event in the Brighton Festival - I can't wait!”

Radical Remembering, 22 May

Described as an evening rooted in histories of resistance, through a lens of creativity and performance, it forms part of the Festival of Ideas, a collaboration between the University’s School of Media, Arts and Humanities and the Brighton Festival that harnesses the transformative power of the arts and humanities to fashion new ways of thinking about the past, present and future.

Subira will be joined by special guests during the event, including Dr Nat Arias - a black trans activist-researcher. Nat specialises in abolitionist geography, anti-colonial feminism, and action research. Their approach to queer archiving is two-fold: reconsidering how ‘empires’ intimately interrupt our everyday and demanding political and intellectual space for imperfect black queer migrant and refugee stories.

Radical Remembering is taking place on 22 May, 7.30pm at the ACCA, and tickets are £5. Book your ticket.

Subira is also supporting the Brighton Festival Kae Tempest event on 10 May, which you can now win two tickets for! Find out how to enter.