Beyond Crisis and Insecurity: Cultural Creativity, Popular Struggle, and Social Change in West Africa

The 11th International Mande Studies Association Conference 16-19 June 2021 at Uppsala University, Sweden, was hosted by the Mande Studies Association (MANSA), and the Forum for Africa Studies, Uppsala University. Due to the ongoing pandemic the conference was organized online. More info here

The conference explored the prospects for peace and progress in a region too often stereotyped for conflict and instability. Over the last decades, the region has undergone multiple crises and insecurities, including civil war, population displacement, political turmoil, popular insurrection, and the health epidemics.

The 11th International Mande Studies Association Conference aimed to produce new understandings of how West Africans have been asserting their ability to mobilize resources from all domains of their lives in order to strategize and struggle for new solutions to ongoing challenges. The purpose was to stimulate scholarship that explores society and culture so as to highlight processes that build, construct, and affirm agency, peaceful coexistence, and social innovation.

Visit our conference web site here

FINAL CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

Practical information here

The call for paper is here

L'appel aux communications est ici

Information about conference dates here

 

The 10th International Conference of the Mande Studies Association took place in Grand Bassam, Côte d'Ivoire, 2-6 August 2017. More info, click on the image

TIME-SLOTS DURING THE CONFERENCE

Wednesday / Mercredi 16/6

14.00-15.30 Plenary Session 1:
Plenary Room with interpretation: Opening Ceremony, Introduction to the Theme, and two Paper Presentations on Women Leadership and Warlord Democrats
 
15.30-16.00 Break
 
16.00-17.30 Parallel Session 1 – five panels
Room 1: Dynamics of West African Conflict Resolution
Room 2: Voix locales et projets internationaux
Room 3: Political Identities from Gambia to Ghana
Room 5: Historical Traces in Unexpected Places, part 1
Room 6: Le Sahel (en)quête de changement, part 1
 
17.30-18.00 Break
 
18.00-19.30 Parallel Session 2 – six panels
Room 1: Weaving Peace from Words & Cloth
Room 2: Agro-Conflicts in the Burkina Faso-Côte d’Ivoire Transnational Zone
Room 3: Sundiata at Sixty
Room 4: Gendered Agencies
Room 5: Historical Traces in Unexpected Places, part 2
Room 6: Le Sahel (en)quête de changement, part 2
 

Thursday / Jeudi 17/6

14.00-15.30 Plenary Session 2
Plenary Room: Relativizing the Universal
 
15.30-16.00 Break
 
16.00-17.30 Parallel Session 3 – five panels
Room 1: Relativizing the Universal, part 2
Room 2: From Local Conflicts to Regional Lessons
Room 3: Expressive Activism
Room 4: Archives and Mande Cultural Heritage, part 1
Room 5: Masculinities in West Africa
 
17.30-18.00 Break
 
18.00-19.30 Parallel Session 4 – four panels
Room 1: Formes et pratiques de résilience
Room 2: Labour & Liberty
Room 3: Linguistic creativity
Room 4: Archives and Mande Cultural Heritage, part 2
 
19.30-20.00 Break
 
20.00-21.30 Plenary Session 3
Room 1: Secret Societies in Sierra Leone
 

Friday / Vendredi 18/6

14.00-15.30 Plenary Session 4
Plenary Room: Contestation over the ‘mining boom’ in West Africa
 
15.30-16.00 Break
 
16.00-17.30 Parallel Session 5 – four panels
Room 1: Terror & Vigilantes in the Sahel
Room 2: Femmes nordiques de Côte d’Ivoire
Room 3: Peuples, langues et cultures dans l’aire mandingue
Room 4: Autour du livre “Rencontres religieuses et dynamiques sociales au Burkina Faso“
 
17.30-18.00 Break
 
18.00-19.30 Parallel Session 6 – four panels
Room 1: Conflits sociaux en Côte d’Ivoire
Room 2: Mining the Vein of Risk
Room 3: Re-Inventing Islam
Room 4: The Politics of Knowledge
 

Saturday / Samedi 19/6

14.00-15.30 Plenary Session 5: Round-table
Plenary Room: Roundtable on Publish or Perish in the Postcolony
 
15.30-16.00 Break
 
16.00-17.30 Parallel Session 7- three panels
Room 1: Roundtable on Skin-lightening
Room 2: Subjectivités politiques et pluralité d’agir politique
Room 3: Arts and Artists in Action in the Mande and the Sahel
Room 4: Systems of In/Justice
 
17.30-18.00 Break
 
18.00-19.30 Plenary Session 6
Plenary Room: The Plasticity of Aesthetic Engagement
 
19.30-19.45: Conference Closure
Plenary Room: Concluding Remarks / Remarques finales
 

 

Join the West Africa Conference 16-19 June 2021 online.

 

Do you want to know more about Mande Studies Association? Click on the image.

 

 

The organisation of the 11th International Conference on Mande Studies is mainly funded by the Forum for Africa Studies at Uppsala University, with additional, generous support from several partners: the Uppsala Forum on Democracy, Peace and Justice (Uppsala University), the Agence Française de Développement, the Health, Politics, and Culture project (Uppsala University), Kungl. Humanistiska Vetenskaps-Samfundet i Uppsala, and the Nordic Africa Institute.