CFP: Re-figuring the South African Empire: International Conference in Basel

Re-figuring the South African Empire: International Conference in Basel

9-11 September 2013

CALL FOR PAPERS

www.zasb.unibas.ch/empire
Department of History and Centre for African Studies, University of Basel (Switzerland), in collaboration with the Swiss Society for African Studies (SGAS) and the Swiss Society for History (SGG)

This conference investigates histories of imperialism, colonialism and nation-building in the Southern African region, in the context of a critical reassessment of South Africa as a state and nation. The overall aim is to understand the region's history from its margins and to shift perspectives away from the teleological narrative of the emergence and consolidation of a modern South African nation-state throughout the 20th century. The necessity and relevance of this attempt to bring into question some of the core assumptions of South African historiography is reflected in the debate about the second volume of the new Cambridge History of South Africa on the 20th century, published in 2011. This prestigious volume presents the history of South African society and its state without contextualising its regional legacies of colonialism and hegemony. It makes hardly any mention of South Africa's de facto seventy-five year-long colonial rule over Namibia. Namibia experienced colonialism for a much more extended period than many other African colonies, while South Africa acted as a colonial power much longer than, for example, Germany or Italy. Yet South Africa is rarely theorised as having been a colonial state attempting to build an empire.

The conference deepens the debate about these crucial issues and situates it in the new scholarship on empires, cultural histories of colonialism and post-colonial critique. These arguments have unsettled the simplistic notion of a centre-periphery dichotomy in relations between Europe and the wider world, and have moved the debate into transnational, entangled or shared histories of all sorts. Yet attention paid to the building of empires in the shadows of European imperialism remains scant. The Southern African example is a striking reminder of the complexities throughout the 20th century of South African regional domination amidst multiple colonialisms as well as nationalisms.

As much as our interests are directed towards a revision of some of the parameters of South African historiography, the conference will likewise explore the production of history, memory and memorialization. South African colonialism, expansion and hegemony resonate in South Africa's post-apartheid society and in the wider memory landscapes and practices of post-colonial Southern Africa. Here again the conference seeks to engage with a regional perspective, and to explore the ways in which the legacies of South Africa's imperial history continue to generate a condition of coloniality which affects the socio-political order as much as it engenders the production of knowledge in South Africa itself and throughout the entire region.

Conceptual outline

The conference does not view the South African empire as an empirical entity, let alone as a historical fact. Rather it engages with empire as a theoretical concept which unsettles some of the certainties in South African historiography and opens up productive spaces for the re-figuration of Southern African histories. We thus seek papers and presentations from and on the Southern African region and have therefore identified a number of themes, concepts and lines of inquiry with which the conference aims to engage.

Nation and Empire

New histories of empire have emerged from a critique of historiographies dominated by the category of the nation and narratives of teleological progression from empire to colony and nation-state. South African historiography has uncritically replicated the paradigm of the nation around the subjects of late 19th century British-Boer antagonism, early 20th century unification and nation-building and internal colonialism articulated through segregation and apartheid. In contrast to such self-referential historical narration, this conference seeks out papers which explore the entanglement of the emergence of a distinct idea of the South African nation with its imperialist, developmental and increasingly military outreach into its neighbouring countries such as Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

On the other hand we invite reflections on various articulations of the nation and nationalism in Southern Africa, which in one way or the other speak to the recurrence of imperialism in its metropolitan as much as regional forms.

Marxist historiographies of the 1960s and 1970s articulated strong positions on South Africa's imperialism in the region, yet their concerns seem to have fallen into oblivion. While the conference panels will link up with these discussions, their arguments will need to be tuned to more recent concerns within Southern African historiography and recent discussions in methodology and theory.

Imperial Economies

The main domain in which South African imperialism has been acknowledged in historical scholarship has been labour migration, which forced hundreds of thousands of men, and to a lesser extent, women from within South Africa itself, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Malawi into South Africa's urban centres, farming sectors and mining economies, most prominently on the Rand. These histories remain important and powerful in terms of their transnational perspective, yet the conference proposes to expand the discussion, not only to urban areas, mines and other centres of migration outside South Africa, but also beyond the dominant axes of urbanisation and mining and to consider further economies based on the trade of slaves, stock and goods, small industry, specialised skills and diverse commodities. Itinerant traders, commercial hunters, caterers or refined manufacturers as much as printers, publishers, and artisans surface here, disclosing transnational and trans-regional circuits of cloth, furniture, tools and technologies, high-priced merchandise or daily consumer goods. On another level, the large-scale operations of multinational (not only mining) companies, often based in South African metropoles, need to be conceptualised, together with issues of (economic) plunder and capital formation outside their respective areas of operation. The workings of the South African developmental state in the region, for example with regard to large-scale construction projects of dams and hydro-electric power stations, can be added here. The exploration of the complexity of such an imperial economy will enable a qualification of South Africa's hegemonic position as the centre of economic growth, industry and urbanisation, and yet complicate the directions and vectors of economic activity and practice. In particular, for this section, the conference seeks papers which address the multiple avenues and agencies of economic modernisation and transformation in the empire's hinterlands, in which migrant labourers and their return investments seem to have acted as crucial agents and brokers.

Empire Spaces

South Africa's spatial order has conventionally been explained in terms of segregation, legislation, a so-called "security complex", and changing attitudes towards nature. Indeed, the ways in which urban and rural spaces have been conceptualised, enforced and administered according to the requirements of the mining industries and the system of migrant labour, the demands of a commercial agricultural sector which maintained a privileged community of 'white' settlers, and the differences and divisions determined by segregation and apartheid throughout the 20th century, are remarkable and remain visible in the present. Papers assembled here will address a wide range of spaces, among them mining compounds, the architecture of apartheid cities, 'native townships', rural African reserves and military zones, borders and boundaries of many sorts. In contrast to conventional scholarship, these issues are to be addressed in a transnational perspective, exploring the proliferation of urban and rural design and planning, the demarcation of nature reserves and the declaration of military buffer zones from the perspective of the constitution of a South African imperial space in the sub-region.

Imperial Knowledge

One of the arenas in which South African nation-building articulated itself prominently was the realm of knowledge production. The South-Africanisation of science and of institutions associated with the production of scientific knowledge, such as universities, archives, libraries, scientific societies and museums, has long been acknowledged. In an almost emancipatory tone, the emergence of South African science has been narrated as a process through which the centres of knowledge production and expertise shifted from their metropolitan locations in Europe to the former South African colony and nation in the making. Less attention has been paid to the political economies and geopolitics of knowledge production within Southern Africa or to the significance of South Africa's hinterlands and peripheries, among them most importantly the Namibian colony, as resources and laboratories of imperial knowledge production. The conference hence invites contributions which investigate the ways in which the imperial space was constructed by economies of collecting, the operations of field sciences, the development of scientific taxonomies, the birth of scientific institutions, including museums and archives, and the development of professional scientific careers within the framework of a regional history.

Bio-politics of Empire

By the late 19th century, state institutions, metropolitan as much as colonial ones, showed growing interest in the documentation, identification and classification of their subjects. Therein the body of the citizen and/or subject emerged as the matrix around which forms and institutions of governance were enacted and specific kinds of knowledge modelled. Documentation, identification and classification of individuals and social groups in colonial Southern Africa throughout most of the 20th century was firmly grounded in essentialist notions of race and racial segregation, which hierarchically juxtaposed constructions of purified, superior forms of whiteness to the alleged degeneration of blackness and the iconic figure of the native. In as much as the organisation of society along racial lines was the raison d'être of segregation and apartheid in South Africa - and for that matter moved to the core of South African nation-building per se - racism and its underlying archives offered the idiom through which the South African state articulated and legitimised its imperialist project, pushing its frontier of white supremacy far beyond its national borders. The papers assembled here will explore how South Africa's imperial expansion complicated the problem of racial classification and difference, as much as the inconsistencies, contradictions and interstices within the expanding system of racial classification itself. Ultimately, the dynamics generated by imperial expansion and epistemological instability precisely offered the very few spaces for alternative, at times subaltern subjectivities.

Imperial Materialities, Imaginaries and Aesthetics of Empire

New histories of empire have shifted attention away from politics and economics towards 'softer' factors that made up the world of experience, the everyday, and the senses. Empires materialised, and the study of specific artefacts and objects provides a more textured sense of people's worlds and livelihoods. The conference aims at addressing experience, the everyday and the sensual through the lens of materiality and asks whether, and to what extent, specific objects and designs conveyed a sense of a social and cultural space of empire.

Papers concerned with the circulation of 'small objects', such as consumer goods, official documents, street signs, uniforms or mass produced print matters, and 'large objects', such as cars, buildings and monuments, infrastructure and public transport are invited to investigate the composition of an imperial lexicon that linked people in a shared, cultural and symbolic South African imperial space. Also important in this respect was the enactment and staging of 'the empire' through public rituals, celebrations and festivals, as such bridging the realms of the political and popular. The papers assembled here will explore these imperial imaginaries through e.g. various forms of visuality, such as photography, cartography, landscape painting, calendars, or cartoons, and they will likewise investigate diverse forms of popular culture, music, literature and art in order to elaborate on the question of the aesthetics of empire.

Abstract submission

The thematic foci presented above lay the ground for the organisation of the conference. Panels and papers will be organised accordingly. We invite participants to submit abstracts (max 1 page) and short information on authors by 4 February 2013 to afrika-tagung@unibas.ch  Acceptance of abstract submissions will be notified by email by the end of March 2013. Papers need to be submitted to the conference organisers by the end of August 2013. - For all information concerning the conference see our website: www.zasb.unibas.ch/empire

Funding and Formalities:

Participants can apply for a limited amount of funding covering travel and accommodation costs. The application needs to be submitted together with the abstract submission. We privilege applicants from African countries and colleagues without permanent positions. To qualify for funding a paper has to be submitted by the given date. - Switzerland is part of the EU Schengen Visa agreement. It is the responsibility of the participants to clarify visa arrangements. Kindly approach the conference organisers for the necessary documentation required.

Publication

The organisers plan to publish the conference proceedings, and different options are being considered. A selection of the papers will be included in a special issue on the South African empire of the Journal of Southern African Studies in 2015.

Contact

For further information please contact the organisers: Lorena Rizzo: lorena.rizzo@unibas.ch  Giorgio Miescher: Giorgio.miescher@unibas.ch; Dag Henrichsen: dh@baslerafrika.ch

This conference is organised on behalf of the South African Empire Research Group. Members of the group are Martha Akawa (University of Namibia), Dag Henrichsen (Basler Afrika Bibliographien & University of Basel), Luregn Lenggenhager (University of Zürich), Giorgio Miescher (University of Basel & University of the Western Cape), Ciraj Rassool (University of the Western Cape), Lorena Rizzo (University of Basel & University of the Western Cape), Jeremy Silvester (Museums Association of Namibia), Anna Vögeli (Basler Afrika Bibliographien & University of Basel), Marion Wallace (British Library).

The Research Group was supported by the Swiss South African Joint Research Project (SSJRP, University of Basel).

Lecture: Archives of the Commonwealth Journalists' Association

Senate House Library Friends: Archives of the Commonwealth Journalists' Association

06 February 2013, 18:00 - 20:00

Venue: Dr Seng T Lee Centre for Manuscript and Book Studies
Senate House Library
4th Floor, Senate House
Malet Street
London WC1

David Clover (Institute of Commonwealth Studies Librarian and Head of Research Librarians - Senate House Library): 'Preserving and Protecting Press Freedom – Insights from the archive of the Commonwealth Journalists' Association'

The 1980s and early 1990s were a time of civil and political upheaval in the post-colonial developing world. The recently catalogued archives of the Commonwealth Journalists' Association provide insights into some of the challenges of reporting within those countries, as well as progress made in supporting and encouraging the expression of an independent and free press. This talk will discuss the collection within the context of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies collections and highlight how institutional records of a pan-Commonwealth non-governmental organisation can add to our understanding of this period of a movement towards increased democracy in the post-independence period.

If you would like to attend, please contact Senate House Library office: shl.officeadmin@london.ac.uk

tel. 020 7862 8411.

New books - December 2012

A selection of new books added to the library collections and catalogue in December. Themes include women and gender, ethnicity and identity and settler colonialism:

Harman, Kristyn. Aboriginal convicts : Aborigines, Khoisan and Maori exiles in the Australian penal colonies, Sydney : NewSouth Publishing, 2012.

Tilley, Helen. Africa as a living laboratory : empire, development, and the problem of scientific knowledge, 1870-1950, Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Grant, Sandy. Botswana : an historical anthology, Ely : Melrose Books, c2012.

Newton, Melanie J. The children of Africa in the colonies : free people of color in Barbados in the age of emancipation, Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, c2008.

Jackson, Shona N. Creole indigeneity : between myth and nation in the Caribbean, Minneapolis, Minn ; Bristol : University of Minnesota Press, 2012.

Peterson, Derek R. Ethnic patriotism and the East African Revival : a history of dissent, c. 1935-1972, Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2012, ©2012.

Msindo, Enocent. Ethnicity in Zimbabwe : transformations in Kalanga and Ndebele societies, 1860-1990, Rochester, NY : University of Rochester Press, 2012.

McKenna, Mark. An eye for eternity : the life of Manning Clark, Carlton, Vic. : Miegunyah Press, 2011.

MacKenzie, Megan H. Female soldiers in Sierra Leone : sex, security, and post-conflict development, New York : New York University Press, 2012

Bennett, Huw C. Fighting the Mau Mau : the British Army and counter-insurgency in the Kenya Emergency, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Frost, Diane. From the pit to the market : politics and the diamond economy in Sierra Leone, Oxford : James Currey, 2012.

M'Cormack-Hale, Fredline A. O. Gender, peace and security : women's advocacy and conflict resolution, London : Commonwealth Secretariat, c2012.

Vubo, Emmanuel Yenshu (ed). Gender relations in Cameroon : multidisciplinary perspectives, Mankon, Bamenda, Cameroon : Langaa Research & Publishing CIG, c2012.

Forde, Fiona. An inconvenient youth : Julius Malema and the 'new' ANC, London : Portobello Books, 2012.

Williams, Carol. Indigenous women and work : from labor to activism, Urbana : University of Illinois Press, c2012.

Kea, Pamela J. Land, labour and entrustment : West African female farmers and the politics of difference, Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2010.

Palenski, Ron. The making of New Zealanders, Auckland, N.Z. : Auckland University Press, 2012.

Tremblay, Manon, David Paternotte and Carol Johnson (eds). The lesbian and gay movement and the state : comparative insights into a transformed relationship, Farnham, Surrey ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, 2011.

Hogg, Robert. Men and manliness on the frontier : Queensland and British Columbia in the mid-nineteenth century, Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Paul, Erik. Neoliberal Australia and US imperialism in East Asia, New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Younger, Paul. New homelands : Hindu communities in Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad, South Africa, Fiji, and East Africa, Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2010.

Commonwealth Symposium on Teacher Mobility, Recruitment and Migration (6th : 2011 : Addis Ababa, Ethiopia). Next steps in managing teacher migration : papers of the Sixth Commonwealth Research Symposium on Teacher Mobility, Recruitment and Migration : Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 8-9 June 2011, London : Commonwealth Secretariat, 2012.

Jimu, Ignasio Malizani. Peri-urban land transactions : everyday practices and relations in peri-urban Blantyre, Malawi, Mankon, Bamenda : Langaa Research & Pub. CIG, 2012.

Kumarasingham, Harshan. A political legacy of the British Empire : power and the Westminster system in post-colonial India and Sri Lanka, London : I.B. Tauris, 2012.

Boucher, Leigh, Jane Carey, and Katherine Ellinghaus (eds). Re-orienting whiteness, New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Veracini, Lorenzo. Settler colonialism : a theoretical overview, Houndmills, Basingstoke ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, c2010.

McCulloch, Jock. South Africa's gold mines and the politics of silicosis, Oxford : James Currey, 2012.

Bateman, Fiona and Lionel Pilkington. Studies in settler colonialism : politics, identity and culture, Houndmills, Basingstoke, New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Lubbe, Hendrik J. Successive and additional measures to the TRC amnesty scheme in South Africa : prosecutions and presidential pardons, Mortsel : Intersentia , 2012.

James, Paul et al. Sustainable communities, sustainable development : other paths for Papua New Guinea, Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, c2012.

Brennan, James R. Taifa : making nation and race in urban Tanzania, Athens : Ohio University Press, c2012.

Nathan, S. R. An unexpected journey : path to the presidency, Singapore : Editions Didier Millet, [2011]

Wright, Donald R. The world and a very small place in Africa : a history of globalization in Niumi, the Gambia, Armonk, N.Y. : M.E. Sharpe, c2010.

Lahire, Nathalie, Richard Johanson, and Ryoko Tomita Wilcox. Youth employment and skills development in The Gambia, Washington DC : International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank, 2011.

Africa Review of Books

Africa Review of Books


The Africa Review of Books (ISSN 0851-7592) is published by CODESRIA twice yearly in English and in French. The editorial production of the Africa Review of Books is led by the Forum for Social Studies (FSS), based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with the active support of the Centre national de recherche en anthropologie sociale et culturelle (CRASC), based in Oran, Algeria.
The initiative for the publication of the Africa Review of Books (ISSN 0851–7592) dates back to about a decade and it "emerged out of a shared concern in the African social research community that considered it expedient to create a forum for a critical presentation of books produced on Africa within and outside the continent."


The CODESRIA website provides links to past issues of the Review, and is a very useful source for in depth reviews and analysis of recent titles published about and across Africa.

‘A charred and battered peninsula’: artistic reflections on the Dardanelles and other sites of memory

New Zealand Studies Network presents:
Professor Paul Gough
‘A charred and battered peninsula’: artistic reflections on the Dardanelles and other sites of memory
6.00 to 8.00 p.m. Friday 18th January
Birkbeck, University of London (Room Malet St 254)

To book: please email info.nzsn@gmail.com

In an illustrated lecture Paul Gough will reflect upon his sojourns in the 1990s in the memory-scapes of Gallipoli, exploring the charred headlands of the Dardanelles Peninsula, the once-hidden trenches and dug-outs of New Zealand troops; and then in France, Belgium and Salonika. The resulting drawings and paintings were shown at New Zealand House in London and at the National War Memorial in Wellington. Gough has also written about the way war artists learned to describe emptiness and abandonment. His lecture will focus on how New Zealand artists have articulated their vision of war and peace.

Professor Paul Gough, painter, broadcaster and writer, has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad, most recently in Canada, New Zealand and Australia, and is represented in several permanent art collections. His research interests lie in the processes and iconography of commemoration, the cultural geographies of battlefields, and the representation of peace and conflict in the 20th/21st century. Paul Gough has worked for ITV, BBC and C4 on creative arts programmes ranging from dance to drama, poetry to painting. He is currently Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at UWE, Bristol

Please reply to info.nzsn@gmail.com if you wish to attend.

CFP: Public Service Broadcasting in Africa: Continuity and Change in the 21st Century

CALL FOR PAPERS: Public Service Broadcasting in Africa: Continuity and Change in the 21st Century

Conference organised by Communication and Media Research Institute, University of Westminster, with support from UNESCO and BBC Media Action

 

Saturday 2nd March 2013

 

University of Westminster,
Regent Campus
309 Regent Street,
London, W1B 2UW

 

 

The Future of Public Service Broadcasting in Africa

 

Public service broadcasting is still important for Africa and other developing regions. There are, however, questions about the next generation of public service broadcasting and issues about the continued relevance of the public service broadcasting model. Are we witnessing the disappearance of BBC-type of public service broadcasting in Africa? There is increasing evidence that this may be so.

The growing dominance of community, private and commercial broadcasting in countries such as South Africa, Zambia, Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana is calling for a rethink of a license-fee funded broadcasting model and a switch of ads to these broadcasters, damaging the financial base for public service broadcasters, and more and more closures.

 

As for TV, the younger generation is switching to viewing on platforms other than the TV set. As license fees are mostly based on the TV set within a household, this reduces willingness to pay the license fee. Additionally, as more and more channels appear, the audiences for PSBs are eroding in many African countries.

 

Public Service radio is still strong in countries such as South Africa, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Congo, Liberia, Sudan, Nigeria and Kenya but in others it has evolved into commercial models, with little informational content.

 

In many parts of Africa, state broadcasters still have public service broadcasting aspirations, but the reality is all too often government control.

 

Nonetheless, the need for trusted information about national and local developments is as crucial as ever, as is the need for programming to celebrate national cultures, explain social change projects, and to offer relevant, quality entertainment for all ages and ethnic groups.

 

For all these reasons, new thinking on public service broadcasting in Africa is urgently needed. This is why the University of Westminster is inviting students, researchers, academics, practitioners, policymakers and thinkers to look ahead and identify how public service broadcasting can be helped to survive and develop in the years ahead.

 

The themes explored in the one-day workshop are likely to include:

1. The concept of public service broadcasting in a changing Africa
2. New funding models for public service broadcasting in Africa
3. Public service broadcasting and censorship in Africa
4. Public service broadcasting funding models in Africa and sustainability
5. Audiences for public service broadcasting in Africa
6. Political pressures on public service broadcasting news in Africa
7. Regulation of public service broadcasting in Africa
8. New formats for Public service broadcasting in Africa
9. Young African audiences, new ICTs and public service broadcasting
10. Politics of managing public service broadcasting stations in Africa
11. Alternative models to public service broadcasting in Africa
12. Political, social and cultural roles of public broadcasting in Africa

Abstract Submission

 

Please send a 300-word abstract by 24 January, 2013. Successful applicants will be notified by 31 January, 2013. They must include the presenter's name, affiliation, email and postal address, together with the paper’s title. Please send abstracts to Helen Cohen at journalism@westminster.ac.uk

 

Programme and Registration

 

The fee for registration (which applies to all participants, including presenters) will be £99, with a concessionary rate of £49 for students, to cover all conference documentation, refreshments, lunch and administration costs. Registration will open at the end of January 2013.

 

 

Related Event

 

Please note that the above event is preceded by a related one-day workshop on “New Thinking on Public Service Broadcasting for the Next Generation” that is also organised by Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), University of Westminster, with support from UNESCO and BBC Media Action. It will be held at the University of Westminster, Regent Campus, 309 Regent Street, London, W1B 2UW, UK, on Friday 1 March 2013, 9am-6.30pm.

 

Confirmed Speakers Include:

Akinori Hashimoto,Head of News Production Division, NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation)

Deane James,Director of Policy and Learning, BBC Media Action

Elizabeth Smith,former Secretary General, Commonwealth Broadcasting Association

Greg Dyke,former BBC Director General (keynote speaker)

Ingrid Deltenre,Director General, European Broadcasting Union

Kip Meek,Special Adviser, Everything, Everywhere and ex Ofcom

Sally-Ann Wilson,Secretary General, Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA)

 

For more information contact Helen Cohen, Events Administrator H.cohen02@westminster.ac.uk Registration will open at the end of January 2013.

 

 

CFP: 14th Annual Researching Africa Day Workshop

Call For Papers: 14th Annual Researching Africa Day Workshop

Saturday, 23rd February 2013
St Antony’s College, Oxford

Researching Africa Day provides graduate students with the opportunity to network with fellow researchers, exchange information, discuss research strategies and develop ideas in a constructive, stimulating and engaging environment. The workshop is open to all graduates working on Africa within the disciplines of history, politics, economics, development studies, literature, anthropology, social policy, geography, public health and the natural sciences.

The title of this year’s workshop is:

Researching Africa: The Flow of Research?

This year's workshop interrogates the process of researching Africa. We hope to explore how research progresses, as well as examine the issues and obstacles that confront researchers at various stages. We aim to question the idea that research always follows a sequence that begins in the library and ends on the word processor. We have divided the workshop into four panels that follow the accepted chronology of research, and we invite papers that either investigate these stages (from the acquisition of material to its presentation), or challenge their relationship to one another, in order to understand the 'flow' of research as it actually is.

The four panels are outlined as follows:

1) Accessing

How do we access material? From gaining ethical clearance, to finding our ‘field sites’ and negotiating ‘gatekeepers’, what issues and difficulties do we experience as researchers in Africa?

2) Acquiring

How do we acquire material? From archives and life histories, to images and data-sets, what choices does the researcher make in the process of collection?

3) Interrogating

How do we interrogate our material? From grounding personal experience to the application of theory, how do we make sense of what we have gathered during fieldwork?

4) Presenting

How do we present our material? From the format to the content, what dilemmas are faced and what impact do we make as researchers?

We invite papers on the panels outlined above. Presentations should be between 12 and 15 minutes, followed by a discussion between the panelists and the audience. Please send a title and abstract of your paper of 200 words by 25th January 2013.

We welcome participation from students beyond Oxford. While the cost of travel is not normally reimbursed, appeals for assistance with travel expenses will be considered in exceptional circumstances. We have limited funding and encourage speakers to pursue funding opportunities at their home institutions first. Accommodation for those who wish to stay the night may be available at certain colleges at your own expense.

Contact: edward.teversham@stx.ox.ac.uk