Lectures
The MIASA Public Lecture Series features MIASA fellows in residence. It is primarily directed to researchers and students but is also open to the wider public.
The Anton Wilhelm Amo Lecture is organized annually by MIASA at the University of Ghana in collaboration with the Institute of African Studies and the Department of Philosophy and Classics at the University of Ghana. It is named after the 18th century philosopher from present-day Ghana who taught at the universities of Halle and Jena. The lecture series promotes MIASA’s overarching commitment of making African thinking increasingly relevant in global academia, and it addresses questions of how the humanities and social sciences can contribute to the decolonisation of knowledge production and epistemic justice.
Events
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Public Lecture: Residual History, Blackness, and the Unsettled Histories of the Islamic West; Speaker: Temitope Fagunwa
MIASA Seminar RoomAbstract The historiography of Islam in medieval Spain remains among the most contested fields of medieval history. Debates over conquest, coexistence, identity and the legacy of Al-Andalus have long exposed the entanglement of historical interpretation with political power. This entanglement has often produced competing, binary historiographical narratives that privilege certain historical experiences while relegating others ... Read more
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Guest Lecture: Disavowed Mobilities: On Movement, Landscapes, and Afro-Amerindian encounters in Caribbean and Central American History; Speaker: Beatriz Véliz Argueta (CALAS/ University of Guadalajara/ University of Costa Rica)
MIASA Seminar RoomAbstract: What does it mean to follow a moving subject through space and time? How did mountains, ravines, winds and currents shape human mobility in the Caribbean and Central America in the early modern period? Building on a spatial and environmental framing, Disavowed Mobilities asks how Afro-Amerindian movement, survival, and displacement were structured not only by imperial ... Read more
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Roundtable: “Ghana’s Framework for Constitutional Resilience vis-a-vis Regional Instability”
J.H. Nketia Conference Hall, Institute of African Studies (IAS), University of Ghana, Legon -
Anton Wilhelm Amo Lecture 2026: The Genesis of Doubt: From Anton Wilhelm Amo to Ghana’s Democracy; Invited speaker: Prof. Ato Quayson (Stanford University)
Great Hall, University of Ghana, LegonAbstract This lecture will adopt the life and work of Anton Wilhelm Amo as the take-off point for reflecting on the genesis of doubt and its uses in society and politics. It will be shown through and interpretation of various sources from philosophy and literature that doubt has many modes of articulation, partly in relation ... Read more
