
Bolaji Balogun
- Email: ssbb@leeds.ac.uk
- Thesis title: Poland, Blackness, and Racialization
- Supervisors: Professor S. Sayyid, Dr Paul Bagguley
Profile
Having completed Master’s degree in Literature, Culture and Modernity in 2011 at the University of Salford, and worked in different roles at Pearson Education and Manchester Metropolitan University, I now pursue a research degree in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds. I currently hold The Leverhulme Trust award as a Visiting Scholar at the Department of European Studies, Krakow University of Economics, Poland, where I collaborate with Dr. Konrad Pedziwiatr (External Supervisor). I am a student member of Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies at the University of Leeds, England.
Research Interests
Although Anti-Black racism is at the heart of my doctoral research, my research interests broadly involve race, whiteness, and Polishness.
Teaching Experience
Whilst completing my doctoral degree in Leeds, I have been involved in seminars and currently teach undergraduate classes at the Department of European Studies, Krakow University of Economics in Poland.
Publications
Journal Articles
Balogun, B. (2017) ‘Polish Lebensraum: The Colonial Ambition to Expand on Racial terms’, Ethnic and Racial Studies. 1-19. doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2017.1392028
Selected Online Publications
Selected Report
Balogun, B. & Pedziwiatr, K. (2018) ‘Sub-Saharan Africans in contemporary Poland: profile of an emerging minority’, Minority Rights Group International (forthcoming).
Selected Invited Presentations
Selected Conference Papers
Balogun, B. (2018) ‘Unpacking Polish/European Expulsionist logic’. Youth and experience. diagnosis, strategies and public policies focused on social inclusion of different generations, June, Department of Sociology, Krakow University of Economics
Research interests
Whilst extensive studies have been carried out on Islamophobia, Anti-Semitism and Anti-Roma in Poland, to date, Anti-Black racism has received little or no attention in the research literature and shows a paucity of evidence in this area. My research identifies the need for a body of literature that recognizes the effect of Anti-Black racism that could be used to read Racism and Racialization in Post-Communist Poland. Although blackness is often used in different ways to depict Africa, in this study, the preconception of blackness is studied primarily in relation to the treatment and lived experiences of people from sub-Saharan Africa, who are usually described as dark-skinned people in comparison to other populations in Poland. By seeking an insight into the lived experiences of the people of sub-Saharan African descent in Warsaw, Krakow, and Lodz, the central focus of my research is to find the meaning linked to the problem of being black in Poland and the processes that show how the black people are dealing with the problem.
My study highlights how Racialization and Nation-building go hand in hand; how the Polish state and Catholicism project themselves on the Polish population: majority versus minority rights and the fundamental understanding of how racism articulates with contemporary dynamics of Europeanization and contemporary formation of nations. My thesis examines hierarchy of whiteness; the way the Polish state constructs itself as a nation; the way the state constructs its religion as a fabric of national identity; and Polishness as a superior identity. The importance of my research helps to build more systematic theory of global racialization; opportunity to rethink and reshape global racialization in both Communist and Post-Communist contexts that have been ignored in the critical race theory.