Reconfigurations in Africa
- and in African Studies
30 September - 02 October 2024,
Bayreuth
A range of global processes deserve urgent attention, from climate crisis, to war and pandemics, to the challenges democracies are facing. VAD conference was attempting to understand such processes by thinking through and with African perspectives. Thus, we – African and European academics, activists, politicians, artists etc., coming together for this conference – addressed issues of reflexivity, relationality and multiplicity, taking into account the situatedness of knowledge and knowledge production.
Given this global constellation, Africa-related institutions outside Africa, including museums, universities and associations, have recently come under pressure to reconfigure their structures, ideologies and representations. African studies, for example, have worked to find new ways of collaborating across disciplines and places. However, there is a need to review what has been achieved or overlooked.
To address such omissions and decentring the European perspective, this conference focused on recent changes in African universities and other institutions, including their challenges, contestations, and reforms. From a perspective that focuses African experiences in dealing with pandemics, climate crises, and wars, we hope to newly understand and to critically analyse these current global processes.
The streams of this conference foreground recent and historical changes on the African continent and their global academic reverberations. African Studies have the capacity to account for the situatedness of knowledge production and dissemination. With that in mind, the VAD conference continues this critical and multi-disciplinary discussion to foster collaboration and intellectual exchange.
1. Location-based African Studies: Discrepancies and Debates
What do African Studies look like from different location-based perspectives? Given
the
historical anchoring of African Studies disciplines in the Global North, this stream
provides a
platform to discuss interlinked perspectives on African Studies with a focus on
their
African
situatedness. Do African Studies provide “distinct perspectives” in different local
contexts,
for
example in German speaking countries?
2. Perspectives on current crises
This stream invites contributions on global processes defined as crises such as
migration;
health and pandemics; climate change; war; terrorism; land-rights; debt;
disinformation
campaigns and their effects on social cohesion; race-, class-, gender- and
sexuality-based
persecution; budget cuts in education; attacks on constitutional integrity and the
ways
they
are relevant for African Studies. Who are the experts defining crises and how does
their
expertise influence how crises are dealt with?
3. Imagining ‘Africanness’
2024 marks the final year of the UN International Decade for People of African
Descent.
The
conveners invite research dealing with the self-understanding of different
individuals
and
groups in Africa and its diaspora and their (historical and recent) interrelations
and
mutual
perceptions. This includes what it means and has meant to be ‘other’ in African
contexts, as
informed by (but not limited to) queer and intersectional studies.
4. Political Economy of Extractivism
Recurrent increases of debt, the post-colonial scramble for Africa’s rare earths and
green
hydrogen (also in the quest for energy transition) render the analysis of African
economies
and their relation to global capitalism ever more urgent. This stream invites
empirical
and
conceptual panels that explore lingering and new dependencies, as well as African
responses
to these.
5. Social media, archiving and ‘the digital’
The digital sphere provides new avenues for communicating in and about Africa.
Scholars,
artists, and activists are increasingly taking advantage of the digital to
collaborate,
collect
information, and to combine, visualise and archive different forms of content. This
stream
seeks to provide a forum for discussing case studies, future opportunities, and
constraints
as
they relate to digitization processes.
6. New forms of collaboration in African arts
Recent cultural productions from Africa are enjoying an unprecedented level of
attention
across the globe. Literature, music, dance, and the fine arts in physical and
digital
forms
are
appreciated everywhere from Seoul to Bayreuth. This stream invites studies on art
worlds
reflecting these new developments.
7. Ecology and planetary consciousness
Planetary consciousness is considered a relevant continuation and enhancement of
globalisation studies that surpasses narrow national frameworks. This stream invites
proposals on the more-than-human and relationships between organisms and their
environment. What social, political, spiritual, and economic implications do these
wider
perspectives have for questions such as food scarcity, pollution, population growth,
and
related technological interventions?
