David Olusoga Keynote Speaker

David Olusoga is a British author, historian, presenter, BAFTA-winning film-maker and popular keynote speaker.

He is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester.  He specialises in the British Empire and how we experience its lasting effects in modern society.

David is the author of ‘Black and British: A Forgotten History‘ (2016 and 2021), which explores the global slave-trading of the British empire, and how Britain’s modern society and the 19th century economic and industrial boom was built on American slavery.  The book was awarded the Longman-History Today Trustees Award 2017 and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2017. He also wrote ‘A House Through Time’, ‘Civilisations: First Contact/The Cult of Progress’, ‘The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism’ and ‘The World’s War’, which was named the First World War Book of the Year 2015.

David has presented historical television programmes on the BBC, including recently ‘Black and British: A Forgotten History’, based on his book, and ‘Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners’, as well as ‘The World’s War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire’, ‘Namibia: Genocide and the Second Reich’, and documentary series, ‘Civilisation’, among others.  He has also hosted the BBC’s ‘Civilisations’ podcast and in 2020, interviewed Barack Obama for ‘Barack Obama Talks To David Olusoga’, where they discussed the first volume of his memoir.

He regularly contributes to The Guardian, and other publications including BBC History magazine, New Statesman, and The Observer.  He regularly features as an expert across broadcast media.

David has received several awards throughout his career, including the President’s Medal in 2021, the most prestigious British Academy award, for telling diverse stories from British history. He received an OBE in the New Years Honours 2019 and has featured in the Powerlist, a ranking of the 100 most influential Black Britons, in 2019, 2020, and in 2021, where he made the Top 10.

He completed his bachelor’s degree in History at the University of Liverpool.  He has received honorary degrees from the University of Leicester, the University of Leeds and the University of Liverpool.