2023 Inaugural Conference Of The African Humanities Association: Engaging Humanities, Social Sciences and Arts Scholarship in Africa
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The Host
The African Humanities Association (AHA) is an organisation committed to promoting research and publications in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Arts in Africa. It was established with the adoption of its constitution in Abuja in February 2020. Growing out of the African Humanities Program (AHP), our aim is to stimulate curiosities through a process of sustained mentoring towards the creation of spaces for awkward, uncomfortable and critical issues to be raised and questions to be asked – the creative essence of our disciplines.
With the depth of a humanities and social science approach and not the quick fix of technicist or formulaic solutions, the AHA takes the context of social problems in Africa very seriously. We see ourselves as part of a wide-ranging discussion on the ethical implications of various options to deal with our challenges. We are also confronted with many difficulties in the university sector itself, not least the struggle to establish a culture of research and publishing in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Arts
The Conference
The neglect of the Humanities, Social Sciences and Arts and their marginalisation are global phenomena, but it seems as if some African governments and universities are particularly strident in their denigration of these disciplines. The damage has been deep and widespread resulting in a generalised impoverishment of infrastructure and human resources. Our approach in the AHA is not to wallow in futile complaint about the ongoing conditions. Instead, we intend using our agency to revitalise our scholarship by encouraging cooperation and collaboration across disciplines and countries.
The conference brings together a wide range of scholars, performers, practitioners, authors, artists and activists to debate the critical intersections between knowledge and society, between research and the multifarious crises across the continent. It is about engaging scholarship, sustained by the creative possibilities of a dialogue between those at and outside universities in building intellectual communities. The conference encourages a detailed interrogation of our condition, offering platforms for deciphering the social, political, economic, linguistic, cultural and artistic challenges facing the continent with a sensitivity to the connections between the imaginative ingenuities of our humanities scholarship and the creative agency in the multifarious struggles of people in Africa to improve their conditions of life.