On 28 May 2026, in the prestigious setting of the Royal Society, Professor Sadiah Qureshi delivered a keynote address.
The Royal Society prize is for her book Vanished: An Unnatural History of Extinction, that brings together “histories of science, race, genocide, empire, conservation, animals, and museums, and case studies from America to Australia, the book explores how the very notion of extinction emerged, and shaped our understanding of life on earth in the Anthropocene.”
Professor Sadiah is Chair in Modern British History at the University of Manchester – a historian of race, science, and empire: “Her research explores how racialised knowledge has been produced, circulated, and mobilised in the modern world to create hierarchies of value for life on earth. Her research traces the lasting legacies of these ideas and practices for a variety of present-day political issues, from antiracism to land rights, and conservation, in the present.”
In her lecture, she quoted Darwin – “extinction follows chiefly from the competition of tribe with tribe, race with race” – that became a rationale for colonial powers for the extermination of indigenous peoples. For the social darwinists, this fate was a natural law – “some people are worth more, some less” – because of a hierarchy of values.
In a detailed reference to the whaling industry, she described how business interests took the species to near extinction. Human beings, with their sense of domination and control, felt entitled to obliterate a form of life that had inhabited the planet for eons. She commended the Global Biodiversity Framework, with its targets for 2030: 30 per cent conservation of land, sea and inland waters, 30 per cent restoration of degraded ecosystems.
In the Q& A session she noted with regret the cutting off of research grants exploring alternatives to GDP growth. In response to a comment from the floor on the rise of nationalistic populism and Islamophobia, she drew a parallel with the history of fascism: while the authorities demanded obedience, the response was one of resistance. The need of the hour was to form communities of resistance, that could, for example, challenge the pension funds on their investment strategies that are harmful to life – not just human life.
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