The Association for African Studies in Germany (VAD) hosts its next conference in Bayreuth from 30 September - 2 October 2024, with the theme Reconfigurations in Africa - and in African Studies. The Call for Papers deadline is 31 January. See the conference outline, panel details and other important information via the conference homepage: https://nomadit.co.uk/vad/vad2024/
Conference focus
A range of global processes deserve urgent attention, from climate crisis, to war and pandemics, to the challenges democracies are facing. The upcoming VAD conference seeks 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 – will address 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 will focus 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.