The SouthEast Africanist Network (SEAN) was founded at University of Florida in 2000 and partnered with the Southeastern Regional Seminar on African Studies (SERSAS) in 2010 to host an annual joint meeting. The SERSAS/SEAN 2021 Virtual Spring Conference occurred on March 12-March 13th, 2021 and was co-hosted by UNC and UF African Studies Centers on Zoom. The theme for this year was: African Mobilities: The Means and Modalities of Movement(s) within and Beyond Africa.
This conference kicked of virtually on March 11th with an emerging scholars’ workshop that included Dr. Holly Dunn from University of South Florida, PhD. Candidates Ampson Hagan and Yioula Sigounas from UNC-Chapel Hill. University of Florida’s very own African Studies Quarterly, sponsored a pre-conference workshop for the scholars. The scholars shared their papers and received feedback from the audience. The night ended with the Keynote address given by Dr. Omar H. Ali, the Dean of the Lloyd International Honors College and Professor of Comparative African Diaspora History at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His talk was titled: “Malik Ambar: Ethiopian Migration in World History”.
On Saturday March 13th, there were six panels that occurred virtually. These were the themes of the panels: Pandemic (im)mobilities; Extraction, Development and Environmentalism; Borders, Migration and Mapping; Political and Legal Movements; Material Culture, Memory, and Mobility; and Africa and COVID Pandemic: Bail or Bane. The night ended with a Plenary Session entitled: “African responses too COVID-19.”
Dr. Todd Leedy chaired the “Borders, Migration and Mapping” Panel. Mathew Pflaum presented his work titled: “Immobilization among the mobile: Coerced sedentarization of pastoralists through securitization, pandemic, and post-colonial policies” for the Pandemic (im)mobilities Panel.
Link to the list of participants and abstracts from the conference: https://africa.unc.edu/2021/02/18/sersas-sean-2021-abstracts/#A19
Written by: Karen Awura-Adjoa Ronke Coker