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.
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Artist Exhibition: Weaving our Past, Present and Future; Artist in Residence: Katesi Jacqueline Kalange
MIASA Courtyard & Seminar RoomKatesi Jacqueline Kalange is an artist from Uganda. Her practice lies within a tapestry of sculpture, architecture, research, performance and installation art. It is inspired by the role African indigenous wisdom played and still plays in ensuring a harmonious co-existence between humans and other beings within shared eco systems. It goes ahead to challenge capitalist narratives that ... Read more
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Guest Lecture: Family History and the Politics of Memory in Africa; Speaker: Prof. Carola Lentz
MIASA Seminar RoomAbstract: What keeps a family together? Over the course of the past decades, lifestyles and ideas about family have become more and more different. In Africa, as elsewhere, urbanites and villagers, educated elites and modest folks, men and women, older and younger generations have developed diverging visions of a desirable future for themselves and their kin. ... Read more
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Public Lecture: The working of the concept of the “engaged writer” and the search for democracy and peace in Ayi Kwei Armah’s Fragments, and Nicolás Guillén’s collection of poetry, West Indies Ltd.; Speaker: Setor Novieto
MIASA Seminar RoomAbstract: In this presentation, we examine the concept of the "engaged writer" as articulated in the works of Ayi Kwei Armah and Nicolás Guillén, with a particular focus on their respective texts, Fragments and West Indies Ltd. This study examines how both authors navigate themes of democracy, peace, and socio-political transformation within their literary and cultural contexts. In ... Read more
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Public Lecture: Camarade Papa & Co. Works That Relegate Colonization to the Museum; Speaker: Abdoulaye Imorou
MIASA Seminar RoomAbstract: The discourse surrounding Africa, and more broadly the 'Black world', often centers on the colonial yoke and the ways colonization and related systems – slavery, imperialism, segregation… – have shaped and continue to shape Black lives. This presentation highlights fictional works that relegate colonization to the museum, offering a shift in perspective. It draws ... Read more
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Public Lecture: Beyond categories: Self-categorization of people on the move in the Sudans; Speaker: Ulrike Schultz
MIASA Seminar RoomAbstract: In this talk, I scrutinize how people originating from the Southern part of Sudan are labeled and categorized in the processes following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (2005) and the secession of South Sudan (2011). Besides being classified as “displaced” in Khartoum, a place many of them had been living all their lives ... Read more
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Public Lecture: Hybrid governance and shadow economies: violent networks and community responses in Northern Benin; Speaker: Kamal Donko
MIASA Seminar RoomAbstract: Taking the border town of Malanville as a case study, in this presentation I examine the linkages between shadow economies and networks of violent actors and how people navigate this environment. Northern Benin is marked by persistent socio-economic precarity, limited state presence, and rising insecurity. Based on a qualitative approach, the analysis draws on ... Read more
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Public Lecture: Ghana’s Inland Ocean: The Infrastructuresand Technopoliticsof Volta Lake; Speaker: Professor Stephan F. Miescher
MIASA Seminar RoomAbstract: Ghana’s hydroelectric Akosombo Dam created a vast lake extending 250 miles to the north. Although the planners promoted Akosombo as a multi-purpose scheme, lake transport was an afterthought. When the dam was completed in 1965, no decisions had been made of how Ghana would use the lake’s resources, deal with its challenges, and cope ... Read more
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Public Lecture: (Un)silencing women in the colonial archive; Speaker: Stephanie Lämmert
MIASA Seminar RoomAbstract: This talk concerns women’s protest in colonial Tanzania. Specifically, I look at how the role of Usambara women in the protest against agrarian change after the Second World War has been silenced. Drawing on gender and labour scholar Lyn Ossome, I am thinking of this silencing of women’s activism as a form of structural ... Read more
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Public Lecture: African Studies: pos-coloniality, dictatorships and the global political stability under the Cold War; Speaker: Claudio Pinheiro
MIASA Seminar RoomAbstract: This presentation examines the constitution of African (and Asian) Studies in the 1950s and 1960s as part of an international attitude of political solidarity and critical awareness, within socio-political intellectual anti-colonial movements activelychallenging neocolonialism, forms of oppression and dependency, posing threats to the stability of Third World democraciesduring the Cold War. The focus is on the contributions of scholars and other social actors in Ghana – such as Norbert Elias, Raymundo de Souza Dantas, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Fernando Moraes Farias, Vivaldo Costa Lima, W.B. Du Bois, and EfuaSutherland – helps understanding the formation of a political-intellectual epistemic community, which influenced therelationship between international cooperation, knowledge production, and initiatives for autonomous, African-centered socio-economic development. The research project also delves into theoretical and methodological approaches, exploring how tointegrate research on individual paths with the broader network of related, often less visible, individuals and institutions thatwere vital in shaping collective or larger political objectives. Claudio Pinheiro is professor of Asian and African Studies at Rio de Janeiro Federal University, Brazil, where he also serves as ... Read more
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Table ronde publique: L’impact des femmes académiques dans l’environnement universitaire en Afrique/ Public Roundtable: The impact of academic women in the higher education contexts in Africa
WARC conference room, Dakar (Senegal)Zoom : https://maxweberstiftung.zoom-x.de/j/68524622605 Langue : français ; en ligne avec traduction en anglais Cette table ronde publique a lieu dans le cadre du huitième atelier sur les carrières universitaires féminines en Afrique, organisé par le Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA) en collaboration avec l’Institut historique allemand de Paris (IHA), le Centre Marc Bloch Berlin (CMB), la ... Read more
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Guest Lecture: Breaking Bureaucracy: Fraud and Forgery in the “postcolonial neo-colonised world”; Speaker: Yusuf Serunkuma
MIASA Seminar RoomAbstract: This seminar discusses forgery and fraud as a counterpublic – an alternative, almost subversive authentication of claims (identity, knowledge and ownership) towards mobility and survival. The project examines how counterfeit and forgery – often perceived negatively through the lens of law and morality – can be understood as forms of resistance and survival strategies ... Read more
