Short Abstract

What do Indian Ocean African ‘prisms’ reveal about both African societies and the larger Indian Ocean? The panel will discuss significant recent exchanges between African and Indian Ocean studies and aims for publication of a selection of papers presented in Monsoon: Journal of the Indian Ocean Rim.

Long Abstract

Since Africa in the Indian Ocean was first a panel theme at the 2009 Leipzig ECAS conference, Indian Ocean studies has come into its own as a well-established, flourishing academic field with multiple conferences, publications and institutional formations. During the same time period African studies has developed and consolidated, moving away from a conventional area studies focus to include more expansive dimensions of regional and global studies.

The CRG Africa in the Indian Ocean has played an active and important part in this process, including panels at ECAS conferences in 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2021, 2023 and 2025. These panels addressed themes such as transnationalism and citizenship, diasporas and life histories, islands and cosmopolitanism, oceanic politics, religion and security, port cities and coastal towns, and afropolitanism in the African Ocean.

In this panel we aim to take stock of these developments and mutual interactions between African and Indian Ocean studies. Bringing together scholars working across eastern and southern African coastal regions and islands, we will reflect on what Indian Ocean African ‘prisms’ reveal about both African societies and the larger Indian Ocean and how various African studies research constituencies have embraced the Indian Ocean as a sociospatial identity, discourse, and analytical tool.

We hope to elicit a range of exciting papers that will together form a two-session panel at the Lisbon 2027 ECAS and aim to have a selection of presentations made published as a thematic section in Monsoon: Journal of the Indian Ocean Rim.

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