
Call for Papers: The Uses and Abuses of Political Ideas in Africa
Hosted by the Dept of African Studies & Anthropology (DASA) to disseminate research on Africa at UoB
The Africa Hub (AHub) promotes and disseminates research conducted across Colleges and Departments at the University of Birmingham, as well as by invited scholars and international research partners, students and alumni. Africa is still marginal in school curricula and public culture. Moreover, many of the images associated with African society in public spaces and media reproduce stereotypes that
Operating as usual
Call for Papers: The Uses and Abuses of Political Ideas in Africa
Next Wednesday (1-2:30pm) on the Africa Talks Seminar, Dr Nathalie Raunet will be speaking about Political Belonging in the Ghana-Togo Borderlands. Come and join us in person and online!!
Happening this Wednesday at 1pm to 2:30 pm!!! Professor David Anderson, of the University of Warwick, will be speaking about 'One Man's Terrorist: Mishake Miyongo and the Caprivi African Nationalist Union.' Come and join us in Room 104 Arts Building, University of Birmingham and online via Zoom. This talk is co-orgarnised with the International Development Department.
Come and join us online on Wednesday 29 January 1pm for Dr Saibu Mutaru's Seminar 'Witchcraft, Stomach Cleansing, and Healing Rituals in Ghana'!
We are looking for 3 Early Career African Scholars to join us in Birmingham as Cadbury Fellows, 19 May-30 June 2025, to work on the theme "Conventions of Creativity: Everyday artistry in Africa". Deadline: 3 Jan 2025
On Wednesday 24th April, we will be welcoming Dr Mwita Chacha from the department of Political Science and International Studies (POLSIS, University of Birmingham). This *hybrid* talk is organised in collaboration with POLSIS and CEDAR (Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation). We are looking forward to welcoming many of you!
Title: Countering Coups in Africa: the role of regional international organisations
Abstract:
The talk will evaluate recent trends in coups in Africa, focusing on the roles of the African Union (AU), regional economic communities (RECs), and international actors in responding to this threat to democratization. These actors position themselves as promoters of democracy, but to what extent do they achieve this goal in post-coup contexts? How sustainable have post-coup democratization trends been? Additionally, how can an examination of citizens’ opinions on military rule and external democracy promotion enhance our understanding of contemporary coups and the roles of the AU, RECs, and other international actors in deterring coups and promoting democracy? This talk addresses these questions by analyzing post-coup cases in Africa and exploring recent public opinion data from the Afrobarometer. It will highlight several shortcomings in international responses to coups and propose ways in which regional international organizations in Africa can facilitate sustainable post-coup democratization.
Time and location:1-2.30pm, Arts Building 315
Registration link to get zoom details: https://bham-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUsdeGtrDosGNeBysfz--oo-ml4cCZABa5Z
Dr Gerald Mazarire, DASA's Zimbabwe historian, is our next Africa Talk speaker tomorrow Wednesday 20 March! Join us to this *hybrid* talk entitled 'Documenting Zimbabwe's liberation war memories c. 2000 to date: a historian's perspective'.
The talk will take place at a different time than usual: 2-3.30pm
If you're on campus, the talk will take place in the Arts Building, Room 315.
Click on the following link to register and receive the online details:
https://bham-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcqd-CprzIoHNIs1AXQs7odHD8n9_Y9Sr_l
Looking forward to seeing many of you there!
Our *hybrid* annual lecture is finally coming up! Do not miss *THE FAGE LECTURE* at the University of Birmingham, hosting Dr Dominic Pasura from the University of Glasgow on Wednesday 13 March who is going to talk about 'Towards understanding contemporary African diasporas: Bringing race and decolonisation in'.
The talk, organised by the Department of African Studies and Anthropologies and BRIHC will take place in Alan Walters G11, from 1-2.30pm, followed by refreshments.
If you cannot come in person, register on the following link to get the zoom details:
https://bham-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZItc-2trDIrEtXDnMYLgAiunk1L_A7IHANB
Dr Dominic Pasura:
Dr Dominic Pasura is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom and the Principal Investigator of the ESRC funded project ‘The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Transnational Young People of African Migrant Background’. His areas of research interest include African studies, transnational relations and processes, diaspora studies and the sociology of religion. He is the author of African Transnational Diasporas: Fractured Communities and Plural Identities of Zimbabweans in Britain (2014). He co-edited the academic volume Migration, Transnationalism, and Catholicism: Global Perspectives (2016) and the Routledge Handbook of Contemporary African Migration (2023), which offers an authoritative multi-disciplinary overview of contemporary African international migration.
Abstract: In this public lecture, I seek to enhance our understanding of the migration processes and experiences of contemporary African diasporas by incorporating race and decolonisation into the literature on diaspora. Few contemporary topics are more pertinent in the UK and globally than those concerning migration and diasporas and their impact on both the countries they move to and the ones they leave behind. Even though race and forms of coloniality shape transnational migration processes and experiences, these factors are often silenced, ignored or absent from the diaspora literature and migration studies as a whole. The concept of diaspora and its social and historical implications are usually approached through a Eurocentric lens, which embraces integration into Western societies as normative. I will draw on the decolonial approach and use my research on the Zimbabwean diaspora to emphasise the importance of viewing contemporary African diasporas through the lenses of history, context, relationality and African agency. The lecture will examine how and in what ways contemporary African diasporas in Britain organise and mobilise in the face of "otherness," racial structures and a hostile environment. In doing so, I plan to position race, racism and colonialism at the centre of the lived experiences and cross-border practices of contemporary African diasporas.
Our Africa Talk tomorrow on 'The role of Presence Africaine in decolonising the minds' is sadly CANCELLED.
There will be NO AFRICA TALK tomorrow. Apologies for any inconvenience.
Come and join us *tomorrow* Wednesday 28 February to listen to Evander Da Silva from the Federal University of Latin American Integration on 'The making of African Studies in Brazil and the UK: some historiographical notes'.
This talk will be held *online only* from 1-2.30pm
Register here to get the online details: https://bham-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAqcOuprzkvEtLLpmm6tM9xnQ1-1bbFfUJA
Title: The making of African Studies in Brazil and the UK: some historiographical notes
Abstract:
The main aim of this seminar is to discuss the historiography of African Studies in Brazil and the United Kingdom, from a comparative perspective, with a particular focus on the Centre of Afro-Oriental Studies (CEAO), established in Salvador, Bahia, in 1959, and the Centre of West African Studies (CWAS), founded at the University of Birmingham in 1963. In the Brazilian case, there is a tradition of research on Afro-Brazilian culture dating back to the 1930s, primarily associated with the works of intellectuals such as Gilberto Freyre, Arthur Ramos, and Edson Carneiro. In the British case, a significant shift in African Studies and African History can be observed, particularly in the post-1945 era and in response to political reconfigurations prompted by decolonization in Africa - a shift from "Imperial History" to "African History" proper. From a comparative standpoint, and with a focus on publications (in the case of CEAO, the "Afro-Ásia" magazine) and theses and dissertations (in the case of CWAS), a pronounced interest in Nigerian societies and cultures can be noted, albeit through distinct theoretical and methodological perspectives.
We will be welcoming Prof. Jonathan Fisher tomorrow Wednesday 14 Feb for our *hybrid* Africa Talk! Join us to listen to a very topical presentation from 1-2.30pm, at the European Research Institute 149 on campus. This talk is a collaboration between the Department of African Studies and Anthropology and the Department of International Development.
For details on how to join online and to register:
https://bham-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMpfuysrDwiHN0HDQGvbHilaWGQH76Tb_sJ
Title: 'Connectivity, Colonialism, and Content Moderation: The International Politics of Internet Shutdowns in Africa'
Abstract: One in four Africans were impacted by internet shutdowns and restrictions in 2022. Scholarly analysis has generally analysed these developments through a domestic lens, understanding state-imposed internet disruptions in Africa as part of broader authoritarian regime maintenance strategies (Access Now 2023: 12). In this presentation, Jonathan Fisher nonetheless argues for a conceptual shift in how these, often highly-damaging, incidents are understood by scholars of International Relations. Drawing on research undertaken in Nigeria, Uganda, and Burkina Faso, together with interviews with former staff of Facebook/Meta and Twitter/X, he argues for a more international, and historically-centred understanding of digital disruption in Africa. Neo-/colonialism, political authority, and technological connectivity have, he underlines, been intertwined across modern African history, influencing, to a significant extent, how the contemporary flow and curation of digital content is viewed, experienced, and articulated by different actors and communities. In this context, social media platforms often manifest not as technological vectors of exchange, but as distant, Western, and (largely) unaccountable political authorities themselves.
Join us tomorrow for an Africa Talk on 'Excavation/Elevation: vertical urbanisation in Nairobi' by Dr Constance Smith from the University of Manchester!
The *hybrid* talk will take place from 1-2.30pm, Arts Building 315 on campus, and online. Please register on the following link to get all the info: https://bham-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUvfu2rrzwrHtcnVa9cqPTW_ZUvZIkLqJqJ
Abstract: Exploring geological manipulation of the urban landscape, Excavation / Elevation follows the materials and labour of Nairobi’s urban transformation. All across this rapidly growing city, fields are becoming tower blocks. Excavation and extraction, quarrying and land speculation underpin high-rise skylines. But horizons can be fragile: buildings collapse and construction sites play host to new urban ecologies.
A practice-led collaboration between James Muriuki and Constance Smith, Excavation / Elevation explores cultures of construction in Nairobi. Our visual research took us from quarries where stone is cut to construction sites, prestige developments to dense tenement housing, building collapses to salvage economies of scrap. After several months of fieldwork, we produced two short films, a series of photography and sculptural installation, as well as talks and written publications. These have been exhibited in Nairobi and we are currently producing a photobook and further exhibition. In this seminar, I reflect on this multi-modal research and how visual methods helped to engage with both the surface and the underneath of Nairobi’s emerging verticality.
And after listening to Dr Tinashe Mushakavanhu on Zimbabwean HIstory, another hybrid talk is organised on the same day (31 Jan) by The Department of Drama and Theatre Arts taking place 4.30-6pm, at GS1 (charles W. Gillet Centre). Please email [email protected] to register.
Dr Claire French and Dr Samuel Ravengai are going to present on 'Afroscenology and British Actors? Mobilising cultural and linguistic resources in performer training'.
Another exciting Africa Talk is taking place tomorrow Wednesday 31 Jan, 1-2.30pm, in Arts 315 with Dr Tinashe Mushakavanhu from the University of Oxford!
Come and join us for the hybrid event.
Online registration at: https://bham-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwsdu-rpzgqHdzjHWYSDPVqq4r38YWf7sFr
Title: As if he knew history would not be kind to him: Ndabaningi Sithole and Zimbabwean history
Abstract:
Nationalist politics was an unforgiving sport. Even though Ndabaningi Sithole was the founding president of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), he has been until recently a maligned figure in Zimbabwe's liberation history. After falling out with his comrades, he was labelled a 'traitor', 'sellout', 'puppet' until his death in 2000. His successor, Robert Mugabe, had a reason for wanting him forgotten. Sithole fashioned himself as an intellectual politician and spent most of his years in detention alongside his comrades, writing and attempting to theorise the struggle in real time. He was the most published 'Zimbabwean' author between 1956 and 1980. Tinashe Mushakavanhu explores this complicated figure through the first major biographical book, Ndabaningi Sithole: A Forgotten Founding Father (2023) published in the Voices of Liberation Series by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) Press in South Africa.
This month we said farewell and congratulations to our Cadbury Postdoctoral Fellow, Morenikeji Asaaju whose next chapter begins as Assistant Prof at Governors State University, Illinois! We look forward to ongoing collaborations!
Come and join us to our hybrid event on Wednesday 24 January to listen to Dr Laura Martin! (Arts Building 315).
Registration link: https://bham-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEtfuCoqTgpGtFhWRBt2D86_CMqVs_8I1DG
Title:
Book launch: Navigating Local Transitional Justice: Agency at Work in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone
Abstract:
In post-war Sierra Leone, a range of transitional justice mechanisms were implemented to address experiences of conflict, violence, and human rights violations. Much of the research on local transitional justice processes has focused on the work of formal institutions, failing to acknowledge how individual and communal dynamics shape and are shaped by them. During her talk, Dr Martin will discuss how Sierra Leoneans navigated their own personal circumstances during the conflict and post-conflict period. Developing the idea of recognised and unrecognised transitional justice processes, the book explores Fambul Tok as an example of a recognised local transitional justice program and shows how ordinary Sierra Leoneans appropriated Fambul Tok's agenda for their own purposes, highlighting the agencies of a diverse range of actors in shaping transitional justice processes. Justice, as Martin ultimately argues, is not something that happens to or for people, but is enacted by individuals and communities.