Black History Month: Dr Rochelle Rowe, 'The Black Woman Modernist Muse in Jacob Epstein's Art, 1915-1959'

Dr Rochelle Rowe, Lecturer in Black British History, shares from her research into the Black women art models who worked with famous British sculptor Jacob Epstein, but whose lives and labours have been erased from the historical record, until now. An illuminating discussion centred on some forgotten figures of interwar Black London.

Dr Rochelle Rowe is a historian focused on the cultural history of race, gender and the body. She lectures in Black British History at the University of Edinburgh. Her first book is Imagining Caribbean Womanhood: race, nation and beauty competitions and tells a Black Feminist history of beauty spanning the Caribbean, Harlem and London and is published in paperback by Manchester University Press. Rochelle's current research explores the lives and labours of Black art models in nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain; performative blackness and Black Histories in Scotland; and race, gender and identity in the Black British Press. Rochelle's award-winning teaching focuses on Black Histories in the British Empire, including dedicated courses on Carnival in the Atlantic World, Representations of Blackness in Britain and Europe, Black Activism in Britain since 1800 and Black Feminist Thought.

Annually Learning and Programmes in Museums & Galleries Edinburgh works in partnership with CRER (The Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights) to host Edinburgh based lectures to mark Black History Month.