Marika Sherwood


Marika Sherwood is a Hungarian-born historian, researcher, educator and author, based in England since 1965.

Biography

Sherwood was born in 1937 in Budapest, Hungary. With the remains of her Jewish family she emigrated to Australia in 1948. A short stint of employment in New Guinea introduced her to racism and colonialism. She returned to Sydney, attended university as a part-time student and then. as a divorced woman, emigrated to England with her son in 1965. Teaching in London schools introduced her to the many aspects of racism prevalent in the UK. She determined that if it ever became possible, she would do some research on the history of "Black" peoples in the UK as she wanted to replace fighting with fists to fighting with knowledge. Five years of work in Harlem, New York, convinced her that this was necessary.
Sherwood has a desk, but is not on the staff of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. In 1991 with Hakim Adi and other colleagues she founded what is now known as the Black and Asian Studies Association, in order to encourage research and disseminate information, and to campaign on education issues. This is ongoing.
In 2007, she published After Abolition: Britain and the Slave Trade Since 1807. Stephen Shapiro, writing in the Ohio State and Miami University history journal Origins, described the book as "provocative" and "a worthwhile read" for "those interested in British or African history."
In 2010 she invited to contribute to the Kwame Nkrumah Centenary Colloquium in Accra, convened by the African Union and the Government of Ghana.
Apart from her formal publications listed below, she has also contributed to a number of films, radio programs, conferences. Sherwood set up Savannah Press, a publisher for some of her books "at cost" prices.
In 2017, Sherwood was planning to give a speech about treatment of the Palestinians during University of Manchester's Israel Apartheid Week under the title ‘You’re doing to Palestinians what the Nazis did to me’. The Israeli embassy intervened, contacting the university with concerns that the title violated the Holocaust Society's and UK's adopted definition of antisemitism. Manchester University censored the title and put conditions on the speech.
She has written nine entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Selected publications

Books

On peoples of African and Asian origins / descent in the UK
On the trade in enslaved Africans, and slavery
On Pan-Africanism / Kwame Nkrumah
On Africa / Africans
On education
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