In 2017 I started my Masters by Research in Communications, Cultural and Media Studies at the University of Huddersfield. Over the course of the year I worked on my thesis with the support of my supervisor Dr. Richard McCulloch. I proudly graduated in the summer of 2019.

My thesis was entitled: “Transatlantic Black Lives Matter: Motivations for Participation and Non-Participation in Black Lives Matter Beyond the USA‘. It explored themes relating to participation in Black Lives Matter outside of the US, and how/why people form particular ideas that either encourages or discourages participation.

Having set out to collect between 100 – 150 survey responses, I actually received 450 (383 of which were usable). This meant that I had a greater resource pool and was able to expand on key themes within responses.

Key findings included:

• Relevance and relatability played a huge role in how people perceived, and therefore responded to Black Lives Matter.
• The framing of ideals and how deeply tied our identities are to these ideals has a great impact to people’s response. Questions were raised around national identity and cultural context, and how these elements guide our engagement in movements. It highlighted deep, introspective work that participants from non-Black backgrounds had to do to view the movement from a different point of view.
• A common occurrence in responses was around the movement being more inclusive – both in adding other communities to the rallying cry, i.e. Indian Lives Matter, and in having more people from non-Black communities speak on the behalf of the movement. This paves the way for future researchers to explore allyship and what that says about society when the stories of the Black experience are perceived to be better told and better received when they are told from non-Black people.

You can read my thesis here.