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ANU Africa Network
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This website was established in 2013 by David Lucas, and renovated and relaunched in 2020 as part of a project to increase awareness of Africa and African studies in the ANU and the ACT, funded by the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Another outcome of that project was a major research report, published in August 2021, African Studies at the Australian National University and in the Australian Capital Territory, analyzing the past, present and future of the study of Africa at the Australian National University and the wider Australian University sector.
The major innovation on this updated website is the creation of the ACT Africa Expert Directory which lists experts on Africa from institutions around the ACT, primarily the ANU. We will continue to curate this list, offering a key resource for media, government and non-government organizations seeking expert facts and opinions on Africa. Individuals can request to be added to the list by contacting the website managers.
Another notable addition is the expanded directory of PhD theses on Africa produced in the territory’s universities, a solid measure of the vitality of the study of Africa in the city of Canberra.
Reviewing these directories, it is revealing to note that the vast majority of research on Africa is produced by disciplinary experts (environmental scientists, economists, demographers, etc.) rather than area studies experts. This means that the study of Africa is woven into the fabric of the research culture of the ANU and the ACT’s other universities in ways that are not necessarily apparent.
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Zwangobani thesis on Becoming African Australian
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Kirk Zwangobani was awarded his PhD at the ANU’s December graduation ceremony, his topic being ‘Convivial Multiculture and the Perplication of Race: The Dynamics of Becoming African Australian’.
The Abstract is in the ANU library catalogue at
https://library.anu.edu.au/search~S4?/YZwangobani&searchscope=4&SORT=DZ/YZwangobani&searchscope=4&SORT=DZ&extended=0&SUBKEY=Zwangobani/1%2C2%2C2%2CB/frameset&FF=YZwangobani&searchscope=4&SORT=DZ&1%2C1%2C
It reads as follows:
“This thesis explores the intertwined problems of belonging and becoming as seen through the lens of the African Australian experience. What is at stake is the question of what it would mean to think through and represent the specific and non-generalisable experiences of being ‘African Australian’, without preventing the becoming that, I will argue, is proper to all social experience. This problem is explored through a qualitative study of African Australian youth, involving in-depth interviews and participant observation. While I highlight some of the peculiarities of the Australian experience, my aim is to use the empirical material to productively reinflect the problems of belonging and becoming as they play out in an always emergent sociality. An analysis of the empirical material suggests that there are two clearly identifiable modes by which African Australian youth negotiate the sense of their difference, which I refer to as ascriptive and affiliative negotiations of difference. I suggest that such negotiations of difference play an important role in enabling those for whom racial difference has a negative status to actively and productively engage that difference. Yet such negotiations of difference risk remaining constrained by the epidermal reflex and the manner in which race folds back into – or, to use the term that I develop in the thesis, perplicates in – social experience. Yet the empirical material also points to the more open and indeterminate aspects of everyday encounters, which I theorise through the lens of affect theory. I argue for the significance of a Deleuzian reading of affect, which distinguishes itself from more subjective understandings of affect by insisting on a shift away from identity as the ground of social experience, towards an ontology of differentiation, process and becoming. I conclude that convivial multiculture is best understood in both its micropolitical and macropolitical aspects. Convivial multiculture, seen from the point of view of an ontology of difference and becoming, is an emergent social field that is always already in play; yet, it requires convivial practices to enable its expression in social reality. While I argue for the significance of this more indeterminate and excessive aspect of the African Australian experience, I also stress that experience cannot be understood without grasping the way that race perplicates within it. The novelty of my argument is to offer new ways of conceptualising the complex relationship between belonging and becoming within the context of the problem of race. For all the ways that race folds back into social experience, if we take the question ‘how do I belong?’ as a productive impetus rather than a problem to be solved, we may be able to better attune to the openness and unpredictability of what is to come.”
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Past events Legalising Authoritarianism in Egypt
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Professor Amr Hamzawy
Date & time
6–7pm 14 March 2017
Location
The Auditorium, 188 Fellows Lane, 2601 Acton‘This talk examines the ways in which successive Egyptian governments have utilised lawmaking to eliminate opponents and silence voices of dissent since the coup of 3 July 2013.’
Professor Amr Hamzawy studied political science and developmental studies in Cairo, The Hague, and Berlin and is a former member of the People’s Assembly.
Professor Hamzawy’s visit to the ANU Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies is supported by the Council for Australian-Arab Relations’ (CAAR), through its International Speakers Program. The CAAR is a non-statutory, regional council in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).
For more details see:
https://www.anu.edu.au/events/legalising-authoritarianism-in-egypt
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UNFPA chief to talk about Global Health
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Dr Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, will talk on global health and sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Dr Osotimehin is a global leader with expertise in public health, women’s empowerment and young people. He has a particular focus on promoting human rights, including sexual and reproductive health and rights, as well as population and development.
He has previously served as Nigeria’s Minister for Health, and also as the Director General of the Nigerian National Agency for the Control of HIV and AIDS.
Monday 27 March 2017
6.00pm–7.30pm
Venue
Molonglo Theatre , Level 2, JG Crawford Building 132, Lennox Crossing, ANUFor more information and registration, see
https://crawford.anu.edu.au/news-events/events/9302/tackling-global-health