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- Convenor:
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Henry Mitchell
(University of Edinburgh)
Send message to Convenor
- Chair:
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Simukai Chigudu
(University of Oxford)
- Discussant:
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Tom Cunningham
(University of Edinburgh)
Short Abstract:
This panel invites panellists to engage with the long and significant history of African students at European universities. Motivated by the recognised need to decolonise the academy, the panel aims to uncover and critically reflect upon histories that remain largely unacknowledged or unknown.
Long Abstract:
This panel invites papers that engage with the long and significant history of African students at European universities. Motivated by the recognised need to decolonise the academy, and taking inspiration from numerous recent and on-going collaborative public history projects, the panel aims to uncover and critically reflect upon histories that have in the main remained unacknowledged or unknown. Papers might take various forms. We welcome submissions relating to political and intellectual histories of student associations and papers that examine the role played by universities as venues for the emergence of pan-Africanist, anti-colonial, and nationalist thought. Alternatively (or simultaneously) panellists may chose to focus on in social, cultural and gender histories of how African students navigated student life in Europe. We welcome papers that examine such topics as: scholarship schemes, racist discrimination, colonial development, student accommodation, social life and personal relationships. We are interested in these topics in relation to the present, but also in the past and as far back as the nineteenth and even eighteenth centuries. In relation to the conference theme, we encourage papers to think of universities in relation to their place within imperial, colonial and post-colonial power-relations and how, as such, they are sites of both connection and disruption. We encourage biographically-oriented papers, as well as more thematic, structural approaches examining, for instance, the patterns of migration for education and the global and imperial networks that shaped these movements - especially with regard to the social and political importance of this history to contemporary issues.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 12 June, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
In this paper researchers from the UncoverEd project document and examine James Africanus Horton's and Theophilus Scholes' engagement with scientific racism, as a way of offering a reappraisal of Edinburgh university's black, imperial, and global history.
Paper long abstract:
From phrenologist George Combe to anatomist Robert Knox, Edinburgh university was a centre for the emergence and elaboration of scientific conceptions of race in the nineteenth century. But these theories were not uncontested. Among those who engaged with and critiqued scientific racism were Black, African and Caribbean medical students such as Sierra Leonean, James Africanus Beale Horton (who graduated from Edinburgh in 1859) and Jamaican, Theophilus Scholes (who graduated from Edinburgh in 1884). In this paper researchers from the UncoverEd project document and examine Horton and Scholes' engagement with racism and imperialism, as a way of offering a reappraisal of the university's black, imperial, and global history.
Paper short abstract:
Most scholarship on the history of African students in 20th century European universities prioritises narratives of men; however, there is less on female African students at the time. This paper calls for the inclusion of the latter's historiography as a step towards the decolonising the academy.
Paper long abstract:
Dating from the pre-independence period to the present, the majority of scholarship privileges the presence of African men in European higher education institutions in the 20th century - in particular members of the elite who often later became leaders in the African continent, including Julius Nyerere, Jomo Kenyatta, or Seretse Khama. However, there is comparatively much less in the historiography written on African women studying in UK universities - existing material are mostly biographical works on prominent women in African history, such as Wangari Maathai, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Buchi Emecheta, or Alda do Espírito Santo. The presence of African women in European universities during the 20th century will be examined in this paper, as well as their occurrence in the historiography in this period, attempting to answer the following questions: what difficulties did they face in getting into European universities in the first place? How did they perform academically in comparison to their male and European peers? What issues of racism and sexism did they experience? Why are they not present in the historiography on this period? The paper will argue that debates on decolonising the academy cannot advance without the voices of African women and other women of colour, advocating for more inclusive ways of reading history.
Paper short abstract:
This paper engages with the issue that when examined- do 21st Century African students' movements in Europe differ in political focus from the ones in past, or whether they are similar but differ only in content of political concerns.
Paper long abstract:
Formed in 2010 and growing fast to establish branches (Africa societies) in 21 universities and other higher learning institutes, in Ireland, the African Students Association of Ireland, (ASAI) is probably one of the youngest and the biggest national level African Students association in Europe. This paper seeks to explore the history which led to the formation of this association, in particular it explores the difference of political ideas and vision of this movement in practice with those from the past associations especially as it relates to Africanist agendas (Pan-Africanism, African development, and African Identity). This paper is part of an attempt and contribution to understanding the 21st century African students' movements.