By Agostinho M. N. Pinnock, PhD
‘Fighting for [B]lack lives to matter means taking a hard look at the damage caused by this legacy of Empire and connecting our experiences of [B]lackness to the wars, walls, and refugee and prison camps that devalue all of our lives….’ (Johnson, 2016)
(This article recalls the late Black, Muslim feminist geographer, Azeezat Johnson’s care and mentorship which influenced the formation of the Global Black Geographies Collective).
The Global Black Geographies (GBG) Collective convened in spring 2019. Contending that mainstream Black theorists increasingly lost their relevance to Black freedom struggles, the Collective – a transnational group of early career researchers – committed to (re)reading and critiquing Black/postcolonial scholars/hip. They innovated a reading practice aligned with this objective. ‘Global thinking’, the attention to and interrogation of Black anticolonial and intellectual struggles underpinned by lived experience, organically emerged from several long, often urgent, but, also, very pleasant Thursday morning discussions between me and Azeezat. Unpacking Blackness from multiple perspectives, locations and scales, we teased out the differences and similarities between diverse forms of Black livingness, globally.
Interrogating Blackness across borders
At the time, a PhD student from Jamaica, I was struck by Azeezat’s incisive critiques of her identity as a Danish-British woman, including her insights about the academic exclusions Black/Muslim women faced. Azeezat’s interrogation of her Nigerian heritage added another layer of resonance to my then, emerging critique of the routine over-simplification of Blackness in society. Though not part of the Collective, Azeezat knew of and supported the group, specifically its commitments to theorising Blackness beyond dominant approaches linked to racial capitalism and anti-Black violence.
Looking back, beyond our mutual collegial regard and respect for each other, and emerging friendship, those mid-morning Thursday discussions were as much mentorship as sustained, robust critiques of the nation-state as an obstacle to Black freedom. ‘Global thinking’ pinpoints these limitations, including their impacts on the global production of Blacknesses. As a newly arrived foreign student in the UK, it was my first time living as a racialised, minoritised person for any extended period . I had previously lived overseas where even though in the minority, Black people were still visible and active, holding some measure of political power and presence. I did not know the ‘lay-of-the-land’. Our discussions – and, later, the Collective’s expansion on some of these issues – deepened my understanding of intersectionality, including the convergences between postcolonial and decolonial thought (especially regarding Black studies), and their points of differentiation.
These encounters were significant to my adjustment to life in the UK, occurring alongside a still-emerging Black British Geographies and ongoing struggles by Black Studies programmes to survive the academy’s ‘hostile environment’. Our wide-ranging, bi-weekly conversations, which included topics like community building strategies within minoritised communities; how to keep softness centred in Black theorising while actively unsettling gross misrepresentations and violent erasures of Blackness in mainstream culture, including the academy, were my ballast in otherwise stormy seas. Azeezat’s love of the groundbreaking American series Pose also made its way into our Thursday morning salons. Surprisingly, she later referenced Jamaican dancehall popular culture, a longstanding research interest of mine, in one of her last public lectures, citing me in the process. The Collective’s eventual uptake of some of these issues continued many of the conversations I had with Azeezat, long after her passing; in the process, developing a reading practice aimed at establishing community with others enduring similar research isolation, made more challenging by issues of ‘race’.
Defining Global Black Geographies: How is it different from Black Geographies?
Global Black Geographies rejects monolithic definitions of Blackness. It attends to the limits and possibilities of ‘regular’ Black Geographies scholarship, which, as Wright, Bledsoe and Eaves argue, ‘speaks to Black[…] experiences around the world, discussing how Afro-descendant populations engage space and make place on virtually every continent.’ However, Ouma, and Daley and Murrey note that, the near-exclusive focus on North America (and Britain, to a lesser extent) limits how sites like Africa and other Black spaces (Latin America, the Caribbean, or even the South Pacific) could also add to, and further complicate our understanding of the concerns Black people face at the local and global levels, as well as the parallels between them.
In tracing the complex spatialiities characterising Blackness in multiple global contexts – what Crichlow and Northover call ‘global Blackness‘ – the construction and performance of Black identities beyond the African Diaspora, become obvious. For instance, when ‘Creolisation’, a distinctly Afro-Caribbean mode of challenging plantation culture’s enforced subordination of enslaved people, travels beyond the region, it is further complicated by those who use it in their own freedom struggles, suggesting the performance of Blackness by proxy. (I discuss this further elsewhere). Blackness may be viewed, accordingly, as oriented towards and rooted within specific geographies. Global Black Geographies is simultaneously part of ‘the interdisciplinary ebb and flow of institutionalised Black Studies’, to invoke Noxolo’s discussion of Black Geographies. Both ‘contribute to and learn[…] from a range of disciplinary manifestations of anti-racism and Black life.’.
The Global Black Geographies reading practice exemplifies these tensions. It includes reading across a diverse range of scholars/hip, academics, writers, and artists drawn from Caribbean Postcolonial/Feminist Studies, Black Studies, Black Feminism, African(a) Studies, Black Geographies, Black British Studies, Latinx Studies, as well as Asian and Indigenous Studies, which are cross-referenced with emerging and lesser-known scholars from these and other regions. Including geographies, language communities, and histories which are not part of mainstream Geography, not only decentres its colonial origins and praxis, but it also actively interrogates parallel geographies/spaces, including their disciplinary approaches, some of which are not mainstream. Actively centring Black ways of knowing from the perspectives/locations of ‘the displaced’ and ‘the elsewhere’ proved instrumental in shifting the ground of conventional theorising. Blackness was not just (re)positioned as the crucial point of departure but also critiqued within its own context using indigenous scholars and knowledges. I was struck by these contrasts in our monthly discussions. A recurring question remained throughout: What does it mean to be Black, and could non-Black subjects embody it? This question was never fully resolved.
Looking to the future: Where do we go from here?
In the end, though a key part of the initial motivation for forming the Collective aimed at recovering various Black diversities, some of which I had previously experienced while living in Jamaica and other places, the project was also an essential part of broadening this framework while in the UK. ‘Global thinking’ is central to this process. It adds a range of perspectives and tools for how to conduct Black studies within the academy and beyond. Azeezat’s care was an instrumental guidepost in that journey.
…Until then, Ancestor – a luta continua!
Suggested further reading
Gentleman, A. (2019). The Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment.
Hartman, S. (2019a). Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheavals.
Pinnock, A. M. N. (2026.) Global Black Geographies: Tracing a Wayward ‘Method. The Geographical Journal. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.70119.
Pinnock, A. M. N., R. Gayle, L. Lucumi-Mosquera, and L. Mwambwa. (2026.)‘Transcending Dual Disputes’: Global Black Geographies and the Practice of Liberation. The Geographical Journal. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.70112.
How to cite
Pinnock, A. M. N. (2026, October) Black Geographies, ‘global thinking’ and Azeezat Johnson’s care work. Geography Directions. https://doi.org/10.55203/TWGV2700
