Africa Multiple - Cluster of Excellence

Fabrica de Ideas/ Factory of Ideas Doctoral School 2026
"Worldmaking at the Digital Threshold: Media, Memory, and Cultural Futures in Times of (De)globalization"

The Africa Multiple Research Centre (Kenya) hosts the event in collaboration with the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), Brazil and the University of Bayreuth, Germany.
The Factory of Ideas 2026 is an international doctoral school that will bring together up to forty PhD candidates from Africa, Latin America, and Europe to critically engage with contemporary transformations in media, technologies, and cultural production. Hosted by the Moi University African Multiple Research Centre, the school is grounded in South–South and South–North intellectual exchange, with particular attention to the historical and contemporary entanglements between Africa, Brazil, and Germany.

Theme
Across the globe, digital media and technologies are reshaping how societies imagine themselves, remember their pasts, and project cultural futures. These transformations unfold unevenly, generating both continuities and ruptures, and producing new tensions between globalization and deglobalization, inclusion and exclusion, creativity and control. The Factory of Ideas Doctoral School 2026 invites participants to critically interrogate these dynamics through interdisciplinary, comparative, and practice-based perspectives.

New Publication | Writing the Slave Trade Trauma in Francophone Africa: A Study of Selected Novels

This book examines the narrative and aesthetic strategies through which three contemporary Francophone African novelists: Togolese Kangni Alem (Esclaves, 2009), Cameroonian Léonora Miano (La Saison de l’ombre, 2013), and Congolese Wilfried N’Sondé (Un Océan, deux mers, trois continents, 2018) engage the traumatic legacies of the transatlantic slave trade from the African shore, departing from the diasporic perspectives that have dominated the field. It argues that these works reconstruct the slave trade through what it theorises as traumatomimesis and historiopoesis, aesthetic practices in which narrative fragmentation, polyphonic mourning, and imaginative engagement with archival silences enact the work of a collective trauma that conventional historiography cannot contain. Organising its analysis around the moralities of capture, the spatiality of the trade, and the corporeality of violence, the study shows how Miano’s grieving Mulongo women, Alem’s rehabilitated abolitionist king, and N’Sondé’s silenced Kongolese priest each embody a distinct dimension of what the slave trade destroyed, and how their shared refusal of narrative resolution constitutes a sustained act of mourning and a foundation for African renaissance.

Thierry Boudjekeu Kamgang is a researcher in African literary and cultural studies at the University of Bayreuth. His work examines memory, historical trauma and the cultural afterlives of slavery in African and Afro-diasporic literatures, with particular attention to how contemporary writers engage collective mourning and historical repair.

Dissertation completed at BIGSAS, University of Bayreuth, within the DFG-funded Cluster of Excellence 'Africa Multiple' (EXC 2052/1 – 390713894).

Link to Publication: https://www.avm-verlag.de/detailview?no=E96091668

New Publication | A Comparison of Observed and Perceived Seasonal Climate Regimes in a Rural Socio-Ecological System in Northeastern South Africa

This study investigates perceptions of climate change among residents of 12 villages in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga, South Africa, comparing local knowledge with meteorological data from 1981–2023. While community perceptions aligned with recorded trends of rising temperatures and more erratic rainfall, discrepancies emerged around total rainfall amounts, highlighting the value of integrating local knowledge into climate change research and the design of culturally relevant adaptation strategies.

By F. Rusere, N. R. Houngue, S. Mkuhlani, G. Soropa, L. Hunter, W. Twine and C. Samimi. Published in Regional Environmental Change (2026).

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-026-02591-1

Since its inception, the Rahamon Bello Award for Best Ph.D. Thesis in African Studies has drawn in over 300 research submissions from scholars pushing the boundaries of what we know about Africa and its diaspora. That is 300+ voices, 300+ perspectives, 300+ contributions to a growing body of knowledge on the continent.

Be part of the next chapter, and make sure you submit your research and join the scholars shaping the future of African Studies.

Learn more: bit.ly/RAHB26
Submission deadline: September 15, 2026

Research, exhibitions and exchange at the Afrika Karibik Festival 2026 in Bayreuth's city centre last weekend!

At our joint information stand with the Institute of African Studies and Bayreuth, visitors explored the exhibition "Africa in Bayreuth", selected exhibits from "From Oblivion to Memory: Transatlantic Memorial Echoes" and tested their geographical knowledge with our interactive map of Africa.

Thank you to everyone who stopped by, joined the conversations and took an interest in African Studies at the University of Bayreuth!

Call for Artistic Contributions | AFRICA: translating

Translations are everywhere: in languages, images, stories, technologies, memories, and encounters across cultures. We are looking for photographs and images of artworks that engage with the richness and complexity of translation in African contexts and beyond.

Selected works will be featured in the Africa Multiple 2027 postcard calendar. Contributors whose works are selected will receive an honorarium of €250.

Submission period: 25 June – 31 July 2026
Open to all photographers and artists, amateur and professional (18+)
Max. 3 images per person | Landscape format only | JPEG, min. 300 dpi

Full details and submission form: https://www.africamultiple.uni-bayreuth.de/en/news/2026/2026-06-20_Aufruf_Translating/index.html

------

Appel à contributions artistiques | AFRICA : translating

Les traductions sont partout : dans les langues, les images, les récits, les technologies, les mémoires et les rencontres entre cultures. Nous recherchons des photographies et des images d'œuvres d'art qui explorent la richesse et la complexité de la traduction dans les contextes africains et au-delà.

Les œuvres sélectionnées figureront dans le calendrier postal 2027 d'Africa Multiple. Les contributeurs dont les œuvres seront retenues recevront un honoraire de 250 €.

Période de soumission : 25 juin – 31 juillet 2026
Ouvert à tous les photographes et artistes, amateurs et professionnels (18+)
Max. 3 images par personne | Format paysage uniquement | JPEG, min. 300 dpi

Informations complètes et formulaire de soumission : https://www.africamultiple.uni-bayreuth.de/en/news/2026/2026-06-20_Aufruf_Translating/index.html

Find us at the 21st Afrika Karibik Festival this Saturday!

The Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, the Institute of African Studies, and BIGSAS will be hosting a joint stand at Reichshof/Maxstr. 28 on Saturday, 19 July from 11:00–16:00.

Come and discover what African Studies at the University of Bayreuth is all about, with poster exhibitions, information on study programmes, teaching resources, a quiz on Africa, and much more.

See you there!

Meet the artists behind MORUMA

As part of the 21st Afrika Karibik Festival Bayreuth, the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence presents a live concert by MORUMA on Friday 17 July, 21:30–23:00.

MORUMA brings together four artists from across the Indian Ocean world: Matchume Zango and Childo Tomás from Mozambique, Jean-Pierre Jozéfinn’ from Réunion Island, and Andry Michael Randriantseva from Madagascar. Together they create a powerful fusion of global rhythms and deeply rooted sounds, where traditional music and contemporary influences merge into an intense, boundless sonic experience.

Free admission. Full festival programme at https://wakadjo.de

New Article Publication | European Biometric Border System, Securitization and (Im)mobilities in West Africa

V. C. Iwuoha and A. D. Edgar examine how European biometric ID systems and securitisation measures at West African borders are proving detrimental to African migrants and to both African and European security objectives. Drawing on Niger's experience, the authors trace how criminalising and dehumanising border security practices are directly linked to migrants' identity problems, atomisation, and the erosion of social integration.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03043754241287603