Annual Windrush Day Lecture 2026

Windrush Day, officially recognised by the UK government since 2018, is commemorated annually on 22 June to mark the arrival of the SS Empire Windrush in 1948. This date has become a powerful symbol of the Caribbean community’s establishment in the UK.

Established in 2020, Serendipity’s Annual Windrush Day Lecture addresses the ongoing need for deep reflection and contextualisation against the backdrop of significant contemporary issues, including Black Lives Matter, Brexit, the Windrush Scandal, and the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Black communities. The lecture creates a platform for esteemed thinkers, writers and educators to amplify the narrative of Black presence, persistence and resistance in the UK while unpacking the complex realities of British-Caribbean connections.

Previous speakers have included Professor Stephen Small, Dr Beverley Bryan, Professor Gus John, Gary Younge, Professor Lisa-Dionne Morris and Professor Verene A Shepherd, offering diverse and impactful insights into the Windrush legacy.

Dr Chistienna D Fryar is a writer and an independent historian of Britain and the Caribbean. At the heart of her work is the conviction that Britain and its history cannot be understood in isolation from the Caribbean.

After 12 years working in universities in North Carolina, Western New York, Liverpool and London, she left academia in April 2023. Her last academic position was at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she was the founding convenor of the MA Black British History, the first taught masters’ programme of its kind in the United Kingdom.

Fryar is a trustee of the Black Cultural Archives and the Tudor Trust, and a member of the Church Commissioners Oversight Group, a group that advises the Church Commissioners as it responds to its historic links with African chattel enslavement. She is also a historical consultant and has appeared on TV, radio and podcasts alongside reviewing books for The Observer, London Review of Books, and BBC History. In 2020, she was selected as a BBC Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker.

Image credit: Waterloo Station, London, 1962. Photographer Howard Grey / Bridgeman Images.