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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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In conversation with Sisonke Msimang
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In conversation with Sisonke Msimang
Tue. 4 September 2018
6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Molonglo Theatre, Crawford School
132 Lennox Crossing
Australian National University
Acton, ACT 2601
“ANU/CANBERRA TIMES MEET THE AUTHOR
Sisonke Msimang will be in conversation with Andrew Leigh MP on Sisonke’s new book, Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home. The vote of thanks will be given by the South African High Commissioner, Her Excellency Ms Beryl Rose Sisulu.
Sisonke Msimang was born in exile, the daughter of South African freedom fighters. Always Another Country is the story of a young girl’s path to womanhood-a journey that took her from Africa to America and back again, then on to a new home in Australia. This is a coming-of-age memoir with no holds barred honesty.”
Sisonke Msimang was born and raised in Zambia, Kenya and Canada before studying in the US.
This event is free. For more information and to register, go to https://www.anu.edu.au/events/in-conversation-with-sisonke-msimang
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Africa in Transition Conference Sydney
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The African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific
: Governance, Society and Culture
41st AFSAAP Annual Conference
University of New South Wales, Sydney,
November 21st – 23rd 2018
Deadline for abstracts extended August 1st
Conference Convener: Dr. Anne Bartlett UNSW (Sydney)
Contact: afsaap2018@afsaap.org.auCall for Papers
CALL FOR PAPERS AFSAAP 2018 – Deadline for Abstracts AUGUST 1 (Extended)
https://afsaap.org.au/conference/2018-2/
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Fluid boundaries: politicising purity in Ghana
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Location: Milgate Room, AD Hope Building, ANU
Time: 2pm, Friday 27 July
Speaker: Kirsty Wissing, CHLAbstract:
By exploring Akwamu values and ritual uses of water, blood and other fluids in Ghana, this presentation will revisit the politics of purity and pollution. Rather than seeing categories of cleanliness and dirt as solidly bounded, I argue that for the Akwamu people in Ghana, it is instead fluids that are key to transitioning people, places, and states from pollution to purity, as well as from the secular to sacred, and vice versa. As unstable entities with multiple meanings, fluids also offer people opportunities for political creativity and challenge.Drawing on thirteen months of ethnographic field research, I will unpack how ritual flows of certain fluids are imagined to uphold and/or collapse relationality between people and between people and their broader (physical and spiritual) environment. In this vein, I will consider what flows are thought to socially purify, and what flows threaten to pollute and endanger Akwamu socio-environmental relationality in correlation or competition with national interests. By considering shifts in the ritual value of water, blood and other fluids, I will ask just how bounded and/or collapsible are traditional categories of purity and pollution, or of good and bad, and question who stands to gain what from categorical manipulations.