Black History Month 2026 – an open access collection
To mark Black History Month, we’ve curated an open access collection bringing together different perspectives on Black history and contemporary experience. From the collection, we’ve selected five titles to explore in more detail.
1. Black Britain and Nelson Mandela edited by Elizabeth Williams
Bringing together leading Black voices from across academia, this collection explores Nelson Mandela’s legacy through a Black British perspective. Contributors consider his influence on Black intellectual thought in Britain, with chapters covering British law, Rhodes Must Fall and Black Lives Matter. By placing Black British perspectives at the centre, it offers a different view of Mandela, race and social justice.
2. Writing Black Scotland by Joseph H Jackson
What changes when Black British identity is viewed through a specifically Scottish lens? Spanning writing from the 1970s to the early 2000s, Jackson examines how race and racism appear in Scottish literature during a period of political and national change. His analysis questions the idea of a unified Black British experience and considers what Black Scotland means for our understanding of race and national identity.
3. Black Women Navigating the Doctoral Journey by Sharon Fries-Britt and Bridget Turner Kelly (eds.)
Examining the role of peer support and mentorship in Black women’s doctoral experiences, contributors reflect on navigating higher education during COVID and periods of racial unrest. Their experiences highlight the structural barriers and challenging campus environments students can face, raising wider questions around belonging, mentorship and how institutions support Black women throughout their academic careers.
4. Classics and Race: A Historical Reader by Sarah Derbew, Daniel Orrells and Phiroze Vasunia (eds.)
Classics offers a rich lens on the history of race. Bringing together primary sources from the late medieval period to the mid-twentieth century, this collection traces how classical traditions have intersected with ideas about race, racism and anti-racism. Each source is paired with specialist commentary, bringing perspectives from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe and the Americas into the discussion.
5. Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation: Another Way of Knowing by Lesly Deschler Canossi and Zoraida Lopez-Diago (eds.)
With contributions from more than 40 photographers, artists, writers and academics, this collection examines how photography has shaped representations of Black motherhood. Combining essays, poetry, interviews, documentary practice and contemporary art, it considers how Black maternal bodies have been represented and misrepresented, and how those narratives can be challenged and reclaimed through personal experience and visual culture.
Explore the full collection
These five titles offer a starting point for exploring the full Black History Month collection, with further open access research available across a range of subjects and disciplines.
The themed collection forms part of the wider Kortext Open Resources Collection, which brings together thousands of open access titles.
Existing Kortext customers can contact their Account Manager to access the full collection. If you’re new to Kortext, talk to us to find out more.
