CALL FOR ABSTRACTS – AFRICAN STUDIES WORKSHOP 2022

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS – AFRICAN STUDIES WORKSHOP 2022 at ANU

Studying Africa at ANU: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Workshop: Friday, 9 December 2022
Proposals due: Thursday, 24 November 2022

We welcome attendance and active participation from scholars at any level. This workshop has been funded by the Research School of Social Sciences (RSSS) workshop grant which will cater for advertisement, venue and catering services. The workshop is an opportunity to advance research towards publication, develop scholarly networks, and promote African studies at ANU. Please note that we are planning for an in-person seminar; however, we may transit to a virtual program in case of Covid-19 restrictions.

The deadline to submit an application is Thursday, November 24, 2022. Please email short abstracts (150 words) and the title of the proposed presentation to
ernest.akuamoah@anu.edu.au and cc anu.adeyemi@anu.edu.au. Kindly use the subject “African Studies Workshop Presentation 2022 – Your Name”.

Please indicate whether you are a postgraduate or Early Career Researcher (ECR).

Date: Friday, 9 December 2022

Proposed Time: 10:15 – 15:50

Venue: Research School of Social Sciences, Building 146, Australian National University

Further details

Of Non-native Cultivation: The Indigenization of the Arabic language in Nigerian Arabic Novels

The Majlis at the ANU: A cross-disciplinary roundtable on historical and contemporary issues across North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia

Fri 21 Oct 2022, 1–2pm (AEDT, UTC+11), Online via Zoom
The use of indigenized Arabic forms a collective identity for the Nigerian writers of Arabic to distinguish their literary outputs from other Arabic literary productions…

Decolonial Gazing and Hermeneutic Resistance: Black German Challenges to White German Cultural Hegemony in the Museum

Tomorrow, Thurs 6/10 @4:30pm AEDT (with apologies for late posting)

This work in progress essay highlights the ways that Black Europeans, in this case in the German context, challenge universalizing notions of cultural heritage to highlight decolonial possibilities and interrogate the collection, display, and spectatorship of museum objects in majority-white contexts. I use the Berlin Ethnological museum in its former and current iterations as a representative example of debates about collecting and looking at museums, showing how thinkers like Fatima El-Tayeb and Kum’a Ndumbe III and initiatives like No Humboldt21! offer challenges to universalizing discourses and reflect the gaze back on whiteness. Finally, I offer a reading of a literary challenge to this universalism in Sharon Dodua Otoo’s 2021 novel Adas Raum (Ada’s Realm).

Maureen Gallagher is a lecturer in German Studies at ANU. She holds a PhD in German Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is currently working on a book manuscript on whiteness in Wilhelmine German youth literature and culture based on her dissertation. Her research and teaching interests include race and gender in German colonial literature, Black German Studies, connections between German Studies and Indigenous Studies, and inclusive, anti-racist and decolonial teaching practices.

Details and Zoom link here.

Transforming Small-Scale Irrigation in sub-Saharan Africa

Thursday, 13 October 2022, 2–5pm

Small-scale irrigation schemes have been identified as a major vehicle to improve the livelihood of smallholder farmers and their communities in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), including improving food security, education, health and adapting to climate change.

The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) funded the project Transforming Small-scale Irrigation in Southern Africa (TISA) from 2013. The proposal was to use innovative institutions and technologies to address the complex set of challenges and barriers inhibiting the profitability of this sector, and its ability to initiate the process of transforming small scale irrigation schemes from underperforming to sustainable and profitable systems.

This session will report on the outcomes of the first nine years of TISA, which has had a remarkable impact on the livelihoods of smallholder farming families. We also outline our vision for how this success should inform a future program to develop circular food systems to accelerate sustainable rural development.

Speakers

  • Prof Jamie Pittock, ANU
  • Dr Mario Chilundo, Eduardo Mondale University
  • Dr Luitfred Kissoly, Ardhi University
  • Thabani Dube. International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
  • Dr Richard Stirzaker, CSIRO
  • PhD Candidate Karen Parry, UniSA
  • PhD Candidate Michael Wellington, ANU
  • Dr Njongenhle MB Nyoni, The Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network, Pretoria, South Africa
  • Dr Ana Manero, ANU
  • Dr Neil Lazarow, Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research

Location

Frank Fenner Seminar Room, Building 141 Linnaeus Way, Acton ACT 2601

Also online via Zoom

Click here for further details

Click here to register

Studying Africa in Australia – Report and Public Lecture

Adjame Market, Abidjan, Eva Blue via Unsplash

The results of research into the current situation of African studies in the Australian Capital Territory, are available online. A lengthy report, contextualizing the past and present situation of African studies in Canberra, with reference to international developments, and a shorter article recently published in the Australasian Review of African Studies, focusing on changes in Australian universities and academic life, reveal the importance of research methodologies rather than regional specialization.

A reminder that this research project will also be the focus on the Future of the Humanities and Social Sciences Annual Lecture, delivered online via Zoom at 5pm on Wednesday 25 May (Africa Day).

Studying Africa in Australia: The Future of the Humanities and Social Sciences Annual Lecture

On Africa Day, May 25, Dr Ibrahim Abraham (Humanities Research Centre, ANU) presents the annual Future of the Humanities and Social Sciences Lecture, a critical overview of the study of Africa in Australia in the past and present, with an eye to the future.

In a time of increasing disciplinary fragmentation in the humanities and social sciences, and strengthening methodological and moral scrutiny around the study of a misrepresented continent of many cultures, this lecture suggests paths toward strengthening and promoting multidisciplinary research on Africa in Australia.

Register here.

About the presenter: Ibrahim Abraham is the Hans Mol Research Fellow in Religion and the Social Sciences in the Humanities Research Centre at the ANU. His most recent book is Race, Class and Christianity in South Africa: Middle-Class Moralities (Routledge, 2021).

This event is part of the Humanities Research Centre’s 2022 Distinguished Lecture Series.

Dr Kirsty Wissing’s research on Ghana

Kirsty Wissing is a recent ANU postgraduate from the School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia the Pacific, ANU. She received her PhD on July 16th, 2021, although the Graduation Ceremony has been postponed.

Specialising in anthropology, her topic was ‘Permeating purity: Fluid rituals of belonging in Ghana’.

Her research focused on customary rituals and socio-religious attitudes to and uses of water and other fluids in relation to ideas of cleanliness and purity, resource control and morality. For her PhD, Dr Wissing undertook 14 months of field research in the Akwamu Traditional Area of southern Ghana in 2016, 2017 and 2019. She considered how influences including colonialism, Christianity and the hydro-power industry have affected local attitudes and uses of these fluids and asked how multiple co-existing ideas of cleanliness and purity can become politicised. Through this research, Kirsty brought local Akwamu values into dialogue with larger national issues of energy production, environmental resource responsibility and socio-political power in Ghana.

Dr Wissing has also conducted research into and managed programs about the petroleum, mining and energy industries in Ghana for the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP). She is currently employed as a CSIRO Early Career Research Postdoctoral Fellow where she is researching Indigenous Australian biocultural knowledge and attitudes to the emerging field of synthetic biology as part of CSIRO’s Synthetic Biology Future Science Platform. During her PhD, Dr Wissing was the recipient of two Endeavour Leadership Awards, funded by the Australian Government’s Department of Education, Skills and Employment, and was an Endeavour Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham’s Department of African Studies and Anthropology and the University of Cologne’s Global South Studies Center.

Dr Wissing’s research was brought to the attention of other ANU Africanists when she was awarded the AfSAAP/Cherry Gertzel Prize at the 2017 Conference of the African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific (AfSAAP).

The thesis abstract is available online by searching for ‘Kirsty Wissing’ in ANU Library Catalogue. Due to local governance sensitivities in her field site, full access to the thesis is currently restricted. However, Dr Wissing’s research can be publicly accessed in the following articles published during her PhD.

• Wissing, K. 2019, “Assistance and Resistance of (Hydro-)Power: Contested Relationships of Control over the Volta River, Ghana.” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, Vol 37(7), pp.1161–1178. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263774X18807482
• Wissing, K. 2019 “Environment as Justice: Interpreting the State(s) of Drowning and Undercurrents of Power in Ghana.” Australasian Review of African Studies, Vol 40(1), pp.12-30. https://doi.org/10.22160/22035184/ARAS-2019-40-1/12-30
• Apoh, W., Wissing, K., Treasure, W. and J. Fardin 2017, “Law, Land and What Lies Beneath: Exploring Mining Impacts on Customary Law and Cultural Heritage Protection in Ghana and Western Australia.” African Identities, Vol.15(4), pp.367-386. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14725843.2017.1319752
• Treasure, W., Fardin, J., Apoh, W. and K. Wissing 2016, “From Mabo to Obuasi: Heritage and Customary Law in Ghana and Western Australia.” Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law, Vol. 34(2), pp.191-211. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02646811.2016.1133986

ASPI Podcast on Unrest in South Africa

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute‘s podcast “Policy, Guns and Money” recently interviewed the Humanities Research Centre’s Hans Mol Research Fellow in Religion and the Social Sciences, Dr Ibrahim Abraham, on the unrest in South Africa following the jailing of former South African President Jacob Zuma.

Dr Abraham’s book Race, Class & Christianity in South Africa: Middle-Class Moralities will be launched online on 30 August 2021.

Click here to listen to the podcast, which also features Dr Cassandra Steer from the ANU Institute of Space and the ANU College of Law discussing space tourism. The podcast is also available on Soundcloud, Apple podcasts, and Spotify.

ANU Humanities Research Centre Visiting Fellowships Program – “Mobilities”

Applications for the 2022 Humanities Research Centre Visiting Fellowship Program – on the theme of ‘Mobilities’ – are now open.

The Humanities Research Centre (HRC) was established in 1972 as a national and international centre for excellence in the humanities and as a catalyst for innovative humanities scholarship and research within the Australian National University. The HRC interprets the ‘humanities’ generously, recognising that new methods of theoretical enquiry have done much to break down the traditional distinction between the humanities, the creative arts, and the social sciences.

Our theme for 2022 is Mobilities.

Migration, asylum, tourism, transport, urban mobility, career mobility, social mobility, emotion and affect – our theme for 2022 registers the growing use of ‘mobility’ and ‘mobilities’ as key descriptive and theoretical terms in the humanities and social sciences, and offers an invitation to scholars to think about the concept in creative and interdisciplinary ways. In line with the suggestive multivalence of the word itself, proposals might consider ‘mobility’ socio-politically, physically, or mentally, as a local or global phenomenon, in different cultures and different historical periods – or they might want to investigate the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic has affected our social, physical, and psychological mobility, and the way we are likely to act and think about mobility and immobility in the future.

The Humanities Research Centre looks forward to welcoming scholars from across the world and across the disciplines as we explore a topic that will not stand still.

Full details of the application process are available on the HRC website here.

(Please note this fellowship is not open to ANU faculty or independent researchers, and as travel is strictly regulated during the pandemic, we cannot guarantee international visiting fellowships will be possible. The current application deadline of 31 July is likely to be extended, check the website for updates.)