Sponsored by:
Center for African Studies, University of Florida
African Studies Center, University of North Carolina
28 February – 1 March 2025
Gainesville, FL
Call for Papers
African Studies faces profound challenges and unprecedented opportunities. Africa-based scholars question the value of external study of the continent, but African studies in Africa remains under-resourced. Conventional approaches, rooted in disciplinary silos, struggle to capture the extraordinary changes in lives, livelihoods, beliefs and practices that Africans have experienced in the early twenty-first century. Methodological models that presuppose foreign scholars working in (often unequal) partnership with African counterparts are challenged by new forms of data to which access remains unequal and the unwillingness of African scholars to have their research agenda determined by Western institutions and funding.
In this context, Africanist scholars are continually developing innovative and inter-disciplinary insights and methods to address the continent’s opportunities and risks and creating new local and global models of cooperation, often challenging established institutional and disciplinary boundaries.
SERSAS 2025 invites paper and panel proposals that present original research on new directions and themes in African studies, addressing new topics and/or innovative approaches and methodologies. SERSAS 2025 welcomes proposals from all disciplines, including but not limited to anthropology, economics, geography, history, literary studies, public policy, music, theater, education, public health, art history, gender studies, sociology, African languages and cultures, and political science. Proposals with interdisciplinary links between humanities, social sciences, and the sciences are particularly welcome. Proposals should be aimed at a broad but specialized audience, as the conference is highly multidisciplinary. SERSAS will once again offer a prize for the best graduate student paper.
Deadline for proposals: December 18, 2024
Send proposals to: tleedy@ufl.edu