Lectures

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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.

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  • Public Lecture: New Pan-Africanism in the Sahel? Speaker: Bettina Engels

    MIASA Seminar Room

    Abstract: The recent changes of government in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, brought about by military coups, have been accompanied by a significant geopolitical shift in the central Sahel region. The three states have withdrawn from ECOWAS and set up a new alliance, the Confederation of Sahel States. Whereas the dominant framing of Western mainstream media is a geopolitical one, classifying African politics into the current remake of the East-West conflict, in Africa, the diaspora, and among the internationalist left it is argued about whether the recent developments in the Sahel represent a new Pan-Africanism. The current president ofBurkina Faso, Ibrahim Traoré, plays a key role in this regard. He is frequently compared to one of his predecessors, Thomas Sankara, an icon of Pan-Africanism. This lecture reflects on the extent to which this comparison makes sense. Are we witnessing are revival of Sankara’s legacy? And do the recent geopolitics in theregion represent a new form of Pan-Africanism? Bettina Engels is Guest Professor for Peace and Conflict Studies at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research and teaching focuses on agrarian change, class and labor, social movements and popular struggles, recent conflicts in the Sahel, and conflicts over land and mining. She is editor of the Handbook of Critical Agrarian Studies and the Review of African Political Economy. This lecture is open to the public. For virtual participation via Zoom, please use the following ... Read more

  • Panel Discussion: “Homecoming or New Displacement: Reflecting on Return in African Communities”

    CMS Conference room, University of Ghana

    Panellist Moderators Prof. Mary Setrana (Migration & Return expert, CMS, University of Ghana, Legon) Dr Kwaku Arhin-Sam (Diaspora & Return expert, Friedensau Adventist University, Germany) This panel discussion is open to the public. For virtual participation via Zoom, please use the following link: https://uni-freiburg.zoom-x.de/j/63870254446?pwd=W7TAh55lP2k6UvjU6HXXZb9bnPGjuC.1 Meeting-ID: 638 7025 4446Code: cM5bEpfvm

  • Public Lecture: Staying Cold in an Ever-Warmer World. An Anthropology of Air Conditioning, Globalization and Disconnection, based on the life stories of young Cameroonian entrepreneurs; Speaker: Gérard Amougou

    MIASA Seminar Room

    Abstract: With global warming on the rise, the use of air conditioners is steadily increasing in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon. Only, these cooling devices have to be maintained and repaired by youngs local technician-contractors who face various obstacles in accomplishing their work. Drawing on the biographical accounts of these emerging actors in a precarious ... Read more

  • Workshop: Tracing Foundations

    University of Ghana Makerspace

    Tracing Foundations is a participatory sculptural intervention in public space that explores how form emerges through accumulation, proximity, and shared action. Rather than presenting a fixed object, the work understands sculpture as a spatial condition shaped by use, negotiation, and presence. Drawing on additive structural principles derived from the spatial organization of Gurunsi village ground plans, ... Read more

  • Public Roundtable: Sustainable Publication Practices: Perspectives from the Global South and Global North

    ISSER Seminar Room, University of Ghana, Legon

    Academic publishing practices play a gatekeeping role in determining what counts as “academic knowledge,” shaping both what scholars read and what they are able to publish. They operate within a global context in which epistemologies are shaped by asymmetrical power relations, material conditions, and patterns of (neo)coloniality. For example, research on citation patterns shows that ... Read more

  • Public Lecture: “Plotting Sovereignty, Staging Liberation”; Speaker: Kenny Cupers

    Abstract: What can the limits of postcolonial land restitution tell us about our planetary crisis today? Scholarship in architectural, urban, and environmental history has become increasingly planetary in scope, yet it has rarely engaged issues of land and sovereignty that postcolonial and African historians have long studied. This talk develops earthmaking as a framework — attending to ... Read more

  • Policy Dialogue: The relationship between migration research and policy practice in Africa

    Chair: Dr. Stefan Rother, Director (Germany) of MIASA Speakers: Prof. Leander Kandilige, Centre for Migration Studies, University of Ghana Abena Owusua Amponsah-Bio, Implementation Manager (DV)/ Programme Component Manager Programme Shaping Development-oriented Migration MEG, GIZ Office Accra Prof. Jesper Bjarnesen, Senior Researcher, Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden Kachi Madubuko IOM Senior Policy Officer, Trade and Mobility ... Read more

  • “Salafi Revival, Contested Identities and Conflicts in Postcolonial Ghana (1950s – 2000s)”; Speaker: Professor Yunus Dumbe

    MIASA Seminar Room

    Abstract: This project which aims to produce a monograph analyses the dynamic growth of Salafism and its revival from the early postcolonial Ghana (1950s-2000). I seek among others to analyse the changing trajectories of Salafi revival from proselytization to intra-Salafi and Muslim conflicts and the implications of its transformation as a national movement in Ghana. ... Read more

  • Public Lecture: “Desert Scenes: Transformative Relationality in Genocidal Extractive Zones”; Speaker: Henriette Gunkel

    MIASA Seminar Room

    Abstract: During a site-specific workshop week in and around Lüderitz, Namibia in 2023, a group of artists, academics and activists from primarily Namibia and Germany followed the question of “How may something — in this case, the white settler colonial violence and the genocide, — be memorialized while its impact continues to unfold?”. Through collaborative, transdisciplinary practices, ... Read more

  • Film: “Making Happiness: Older People Organize Themselves”

    Featured
    MIASA Seminar Room

    "Making Happiness: Older People Organize Themselves" presents the activities of a fellowship group for older adults at Bethel Presbyterian Church in New Tafo, Ghana. In the film, members of the group reflect on the significance of such a group in their lives, in making them happy and relieving loneliness and worry, particularly among widows and ... Read more

  • Dance Performance: Kor yε; Artist in Residence: Natasa Chanta-Martin

    Department of Dance Studies, University of Ghana

    Description: During her MIASA residency, Natasa explored what happens to Ghanaian dance and music cultures when the musical instruments are not there. How do moving bodies suffice as repositories of knowledge and of embodied music? Is our body enough for the sustainability of our intangible cultural heritage? The answer is explored through the medium of ... Read more