Olivette Otele rejects the belief that some histories are more important than others

No sooner had Olivette Otele been announced last week as Bristol University’s professor of the history of slavery than a stranger’s email landed in her inbox. “It was from a 50-year-old white man, saying, ‘Why stir things up?’ I get those messages all the time,” Otele says. “People say, ‘The past is done and dusted. What’s the point of going back and talking about it?’ ”

Bristol disagrees. Founded in 1909, 76 years after slavery was abolished, the institution wants Otele to spend her first two years in post investigating how it benefited from the slave trade, which brought the city enormous wealth in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The benefactors Otele plans to research did not necessarily buy and sell slaves, but made fortunes