HUMA to co-host the ASAA2021 Conference in Oct 2021
HUMA - Institute for Humanities in Africa has been nominated by the Executive Committee of the African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA) to co-host the next biennial conference of the association scheduled to take place in October 2021 at the University of Cape Town (UCT). This follows a competitive bidding and rigorous selection process in which several, high-quality proposals from capable institutions interested in co-hosting the next ASAA conference were received by the ASAA Executive Committee.
The African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA) was established in 2013 to promote Africa’s own specific contributions to the advancement of knowledge about the peoples and cultures of Africa and the diaspora. The Biennial Conference is the scientific convening of the association. It is one of the continent’s largest gathering of African and Africanist scholars across the continent, its diaspora, and globally, bringing together over 600 delegates to think around a specific theme. The first biennial conference was held at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ibadan in October 2015, the second at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, Legon in October 2017, and the third at the United States International University Africa, in Nairobi, Kenya.
#ASAA2021 takes place on the back of global protests against the devaluation of Black/African lives. This, also as a global epidemic of violence against women, attains alarming proportions. As the world begins to grapple with the collective existential threat and consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, HUMA is keen on working with the ASAA to convene researchers, intellectuals, activists, artists, students, and the policy community to reflect on the critical questions that are crucial to forging a more ethical and liveable interdependent life going forward, and how-to, and the productive consequences of centring Africa, African perspectives and epistemologies at the core of imagining a new world.
The call for papers will be announced in December 2020.