The Chair and Members of the Scientific Committee introduced the aims and objectives of the conference, set out the themes of its five studios, and explained how the conference will work.

Of relevance to this session are the following two PDFs and video:

Mbembe's Chapter 2, Disenclosure, from Out of the Dark Night (PDF)

Spivak's article, Reading the Archive (PDF)

video

This year's Firth Lecture will be given by David Mills (University of Oxford) with the title Unlearning Anthropology.  The discussant will be Cris Shore (Goldsmiths).

Abstract
What does it mean to unlearn anthropology? Amidst calls to decolonise and transform universities, does unlearning help us understand how imperial pasts shape our disciplines and institutions today? I use Raymond Firth’s vivid description of social anthropologists as a ‘band of brothers’ to open up these questions. His Shakespearian allusion evoked a close-knit intellectual fraternity spread across the British empire and its ‘dominions’. He used his organisational skills and scholarly vocation to assemble the discipline of social anthropology in a colonial university world. Its contested legacies remain with us, shaping academic affiliations, institutions and identities. What forms of disciplinary unlearning best untangle these colonial presences and affects?

See the recording here

This session will draw the conference to a close with a final discussion, led by the Chair, aiming to bring all the themes together and to review possible outcomes.