Paper short abstract:

My projects on precolonial Africa draws on oral traditions & comparative historical linguistic data & another mentoring youth aspiring to become academics leads me to raise questions related to putting art, oral traditions, development work, & scholarly discourses in conversation in publications.

Paper long abstract:

How do conversations-operating from different worldviews and registers while drawing on different sources of evidence- become legible to multiple audiences? How do youth voices become visible or erased in these efforts? How might intergenerational conversations giving weight to youths' voices yield scholarship with new purpose and meaning?

Current collaborative project on family and generation in eastern and central Africa along with a recent special journal issue of Girlhoods Studies Volume 16, Issue 1, 2023 that included artists, scholars, and development practitioners who were themselves youth primarily located in Africa has led to these questions about scholarship, mentorship, and the meanings of academic work on Africa. In societies where generational hierarchies are prominent and youth futures are hard to imagine, it is critical to ask both about historical, contemporary, and future practices that shape narratives. What role do youth voices play in the scholarship on Africa? To what extent does scholarship shape and even hinder the opportunities for youth? in a gerontocratic society, what influence can youth have on their own futures? Scholars have a critical role to play in reframing discourses about Africa and youth in Africa. In raising new questions — about the knowledge and creativity youth have historically brought and can in the present and future continue to bring to envisioning possibilities, imagining new futures, identifying opportunities and solving a variety of challenges — it is critical to consider the roles they play in scholarship as well as the role scholarship plays in reframing economic, social, political possibilities,