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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Lecture Series: Critical Reflections on Afro-European Relations in Migration Governance
via Zoom Migration on the African continent is multifold, complex with varying effects. One angle in particular is the European efforts to control migration, which has reached far beyond its external borders to the African continent. For example, there has been an attempt to increase ‘cooperative agreements’ between the European Union (EU) with African states. ... Read more
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Public Lecture: The New “Magic” of Power? Freemasonry, Postcolonial Homophobia, and Struggles for Decolonization in Central Africa; Speaker: Rogers Orock
via Zoom Speaker: Rogers Orock, University of the Witwatersrand Abstract: We live in an age of suspicion and conspiracism. This talk links current struggles over homosexuality in Francophone Africa to popular suspicions and conspiracy theories about Freemasonry, a global (though originally Western-based) esoteric or secret society with a significant presence across Africa. By analysing rumours and ... Read more
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Public Lecture: Making Loot, Making Restitution – A Short (Legal) History; Speaker: Jakob Zollmann
virtual via Zoom Abstract: This lecture will introduce a number of key events and key sources from different historic periods regarding questions of loot and restitution. Was looting seen as a legitimate, lawful part of waging war against other nations or opponents? Was there something problematic for contemporaries of different historic periods in the act ... Read more
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Public Lecture: Terms of detachment: Aloneness as potential in West African migration; Speaker: Michael Stasik
via Zoom Abstract: Studies of African migration, and of migration in and from West Africa, in particular, commonly place group relations and efforts front and center. Migration is presented as a collective practice oriented towards making and maintaining relatedness, both at home and abroad. In this talk, I challenge this groupist bias and the one-sided ... Read more
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Public Lecture: What Remains of German Colonialism in the Volta Region?; Speaker: Kokou Azamede
Virtual via Zoom, 2nd November 2021 Abstract:German colonialism in the Volta Region was carried out through trade, missionary activities and colonial administration. The socio-political situation in Ghana in recent years has brought back memories of this past through political demands. On the basis of field investigations, this paper aims to examine the tangible and intangible ... Read more
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Public lecture: A Social Anthropology of Urban Land Governance in Dakar, Bamako and Ouagadougou; Speaker: Lamine Doumbia
via Zoom Abstract: This paper examines, from a social anthropological perspective, how bureaucratization transforms urban social experience and gives rise to new dynamic registers to address urban land governance. It shows that associations of displaced or evicted people are “struggling” against socio-spatial exclusion processes as well as showcase the organizational aspects of such associations in ... Read more
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Public Lecture: Metabolic History: Food Economics, Dietary Advice and Epidemiological Change in Contemporary Ghana; Speaker: John Nott
via Zoom Abstract: 1983 was a difficult year for many Ghanaians. The political and economic instability which had defined much of the 1970s intensified into the 1980s and, by 1983, the country suffered through the most severe and widespread food shortage on record. Unlike earlier famines, which were largely limited to isolated parts of the ... Read more
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Public Lecture: Dealing with Audiovisual Aphasia: Filming Restitution in the Making; Speaker: Martin Doll
Virtual via Zoom, 23rd November 2021 Abstract:In this lecture I will argue for an audiovisual historiography which includes exhibitions, web sites, and in particular films not only as historical sources, but also as media for the publication of scientific results. For this reason, I will do a close re-reading of the elaborations on “colonial aphasia” ... Read more
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Public Lecture: Governance and the Evolving Ghanaian Wallet: A Psychologists’ Perspective; Speaker: Vivian Dzokoto
Speaker: Vivian Dzokoto, PhD, Virginia Commonwealth University Abstract: This presentation will discuss selected governance and consumer dimensions of Ghana’s evolving payments landscape. Ghana experienced a currency redenomination in the last decade and a half. The country has since transitioned to an increasingly cash-lite economy as more and more consumers incorporate primarily mobile phone-based payment applications into ... Read more
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Public Lecture: Party Primaries in Ghana: A Conjoint Survey Experiment; Speakers: Anja Osei & Gbensuglo Alidu Bukari
Abstract: Especially, in competitive systems like Ghana, the electoral success of a party is at least in part a function of appropriate candidate selection. Both NPP and NDC hold party primaries in which grassroots delegates at the local level elect candidates for parliamentary elections. The literature on these important processes has however remained scarce. On ... Read more
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Public Lecture: Ablɔɖe! The Axis of Extremist Discontent of the Western Togoland Secessionist Movement in Ghana: The Old, the New and the Grey; Speaker: Nene-Lomotey Kuditchar
via Zoom Abstract: Ghana’s post Fourth Republican encounter with extremism anchored on the secession of Western Togoland raises a pertinent question: under what conditions does extremism fester in a context of democratic cultural autonomy? The Western Togoland Secessionist Movement, which has persisted under various guises since 1946, has its current phase overlapping with the establishment ... Read more
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Public Lecture: The Kingdom of Mealies – Agriculture, Rural Reform, and the «Race Question» in South Africa, c. 1900-1940s; Speaker: Julia Tischler
via Zoom Abstract: Simultaneous to the rise of industrial capitalism, agriculture underwent dramatic changes. Starting in the late nineteenth century, many settler economies were transformed by the rise of a large-scale, commercial agricultural sector, while scores of struggling rural producers were squeezed off the land. The same period saw the rise of a global “color ... Read more
