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Archiving the Inner City: Race and the Politics of Urban Memory

Archiving the Inner City is a five-year Department of Sociology research project led by Dr Gareth Millington and funded by the Leverhulme Trust. The project examines how, by whom and for what purposes the twentieth century ‘inner city’ is remembered, curated and represented. The project is international in scope and focuses on ‘inner city’ sites in: London (Brixton), Paris (Chateau Rouge/Goutte d'Or) and Philadelphia (the 'Seventh Ward', the site of W.E.B. Du Bois’ famous study The Philadelphia Negro).

In each case, the resonance and influence of place—as historic centres of black urban life—transcends the city and nation and extends to the Black Atlantic. How the urban past is curated is always a contentious process. This is especially true in the case of already politicised spaces such as the ‘inner city’, where urban decline was presented by politicians and the media (and some sociologists) as a ‘race problem’.