Short Abstract

This panel explores neglected histories of African artists, writers and other creatives and intellectuals who travelled, studied and migrated across Africa, Europe, the Americas, the Soviet Union and beyond during the late colonial and postcolonial periods.

Long Abstract

Amid growing calls to decolonize institutions and renewed public engagement with the legacies of empire, slavery and colonialism, this panel explores neglected histories of African artists, writers and other creatives and intellectuals who travelled, studied and migrated across Africa, Europe, the Americas, the Soviet Union and beyond during the late colonial and postcolonial periods. Drawing on archival research, oral histories and ethnography, the panel seeks to recover and epistemically recentre histories that have been marginalized, erased or overlooked within dominant narratives of migration, anthropology, history and art. Recovery may involve bringing African histories into the present, but also examining how past projects and aspirations continue through memory, aesthetic vocabularies, institutions and contemporary practices.

The panel examines mobilities shaped by educational opportunities, transnational cultural networks and historical entanglements. Many travelled to art academies and institutions abroad to challenge colonial assumptions about African artistic ability, obtain qualifications or engage in cultural exchange, with some later returning to Africa to establish institutions and careers. Artistic mobility encompasses both the movement of people and the circulation of artistic forms, aesthetic vocabularies, ideas, objects and institutions. These mobilities illuminate longstanding transnational entanglements linking Africa to wider worlds.

Bringing together migration studies, history, anthropology and art history, the panel seeks to challenge presentism in migration scholarship and contribute to Africa-centred and decolonial knowledge production. We welcome papers that recover African historical agency through archival, oral-historical, ethnographic and other approaches, exploring creative mobilities, genealogies, life stories and contemporary legacies.

This Panel has 1 pending paper proposal.
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