Short Abstract

Contested sites and mnemonic landscapes in European cities connected to African diasporas and colonial / postcolonial relationships. Focuses on Lisbon, although will include contributions from other European cities with relationships to colonialism in Africa and African diasporic communities.

Long Abstract

The study of African diasporas in Europe is substantial (MacGaffey 2000; Brown, 2005; Cohen, 2008; Hine, Keaton, Small, 2009). Lisbon, with a large and old diasporic African community, is no exception (Loude, 2014; Sweet 2009, 2013; Cleminson, 2026; Castro Henriques, 2021). Scholars have also become attentive to vestiges of the imperial presence in European cities: sites of memory (Nora, 1984-1992) that still celebrate and assert European power over African peoples and lands. This panel brings these themes together by combining presentations on colonial sites related to Africa with presentations on sites related to African diasporic communities in the same cities. As Europe consolidated colonialism across Africa from the late nineteenth century, a proliferation of urban sites celebrated colonialism. These included scientific institutions, museums, monuments, and commemorations. African diasporic communities emerged in the same cities, contributing to subaltern mnemonic landscapes. African presences in these European cities have thus become a prism of colonial power, resistance, and diaspora. The focus of the panel is Lisbon, although contributions from other European cities with significant relationships to European colonialism in Africa and African diasporic communities, such as Brussels, Paris, Lyon, Marseilles, London, or Liverpool, are welcome. The panel will consider African diasporic sites alongside the cultural and mnemonic landscapes linked to colonial and postcolonial relationships. Papers may consider one or multiple of these themes. Possible topics include sites linked to scientific organizations (geography, medicine, natural history, ethnography), archives, monuments, toponymy, anticolonial resistance, repression, diasporic settlements, the slave trade and abolition, and urban commemorations.

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