Deadline Call for papers: Destination Africa. Contemporary Africa as a global meeting point

The newly established AEGIS Collaborative Research Group (CRG) ‘Africa in the World – Rethinking Africa’s Global Connections’, will organize the conference ‘Destination Africa. Contemporary Africa as a global meeting point’ on 22-23 March 2018 as its inaugural activity, during which the idea of contemporary Africa as a global meeting point will be explored.

 

Important questions include the ways in which people in Africa perceive this new influx and how they navigate, negotiate, engage, and possibly struggle to strike a balance between their own interests and those of the ‘newcomers’, including their evaluation of questions concerning integration, and the distribution of profits and resources. The conference also aims to shed greater light on the motivations, interests, negotiation strategies and navigating practices of those who see Africa as a destination. Finally, it will be important to put these current global encounters on African soil in a historical perspective.
 

The organizers welcome abstracts for papers on topics including:
 

• Competition and collaboration between investors (including international and local companies) and their effects in specific African settings;

• African immigration policies and the integration of new migrants in African societies;

• Diasporic engagements with Africa (projects, policies and politics);

• Cultural encounters in international peace keeping missions;

• Christian and Islamic missionary engagements with Africa;

• Competing development models and actors, both at civil society and state level

• Tourism as a connective or fencing off practice;

• The rush for African art objects and its global commercialization,

• Transnational engagement in Africa’s changing educational landscape;

• The role of the media in establishing Africa as a global meeting point;

• Innovation and technology transfer: opportunities and challenges for Africans

 

Read the full Call for Papers.

Scholars are invited to express their interest in contributing to this conference by sending an abstract of a maximum of 250 words to the organizing committee in Leiden at asc@ascleiden.nl before 1 October 2017. Please mention ‘Destination Africa Conference’ in the subject heading. Authors of selected abstracts will be informed before 1 December 2017.

Depending on the quality of the papers, we will consider developing the contributions into a special issue after the conference.
 

Please note that participants to the conference are expected to cover their own expenses.

The organizers:
Mayke Kaag, ASC Leiden, m.m.a.kaag@asc.leidenuniv.nl

Stefan Schmid, ZIAF Goethe University Frankfurt, s.schmid@em.uni-frankfurt.de