On five different occasions, from 1962 to 1985, African studies scholars from across the globe convened on the African continent for the International Congress of Africanists (later known as the International Congress of African Studies). The initial meeting, held in Accra, Ghana in 1962 was organized by Nigerian historian Kenneth Onwuka Dike and featured prominent keynote addresses by Kwame Nkrumah, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Alioune Diop. The inaugural Congress insisted on the need to decolonize African Studies; to end its tenure as a colonial form of knowledge production located, for the most part, in the metropoles of former colonial powers. Subsequent Congress convenings in Dakar (1967), Addis Ababa (1973), Kinshasa (1978), and Ibadan (1985) built on the momentum generated in Accra.

In an effort to reinvigorate the intellectual transformations that started sixty years ago, ASWAD  invites panel proposal submissions for the 11th Biennial Conference to be held at the University of Ghana-Legon from August 2-5, 2023. We seek papers that interrogate the many diasporas that began (and continue) in Africa, and that continue to flourish in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, the Pacific and Indian Ocean basins, and throughout the Americas. We are particularly interested in panels devoted to the conference theme “Repatriating African Studies.”

Though we welcome panel proposals from any time period and topic related to the study of African-descended peoples, special attention will be paid to the following topics:

• Reparations
• Repatriation of African artifacts
• Neocolonialism and Pan-Africanism
• Gender and Sexuality
• The Sixth Region of the African Union (The African Diaspora)
• Citizenship, the State and Policing
• Environment and Public Health
• African immigration and migrants inside and outside the continent
• Africa and international Conflicts
• Education and Curriculum
• Systems of meaning, culture, remembrance and religion

When submitting your proposal, please indicate which topic(s) your panel addresses. To submit a proposal, your ASWAD membership must be current. Review of proposals will begin March 1, 2023. All proposals should be submitted by March 15, 2023. Acceptances will be issued on a rolling basis. We encourage panels that reflect a multitude of diversities across identity markers, including but not limited to age, race, gender, sexuality, disability, academic rank, geographies among others.

In addition to hosting the 11th Biennial conference proceedings, ASWAD is teaming up with the African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA), the African Studies Association in the US (ASAUS), and Africa Is a Country (AIAC) to host a multi-sited convening of the International Congress of African and African Diaspora Studies. This collaborative global effort commemorates the tradition of the International Congress of African Studies that began in Accra in 1962. During this “Congress Day,” to be held on August 5th, ASWAD conference attendees will participate in special sessions toward the development of a white paper reflecting the commitments, initiatives and proposals for “Repatriating African Studies.”

ASWAD will host the first ICAADS gathering with subsequent convenings taking place at the annual conferences of the African Studies Association of Africa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, October 25-28, 2023, and the African Studies Association (US) in San Francisco, California, USA, from November 16-18, 2023. As a multi-sited Congress, ICAADS will bring together African and African Diaspora studies to formally mark the intellectual and political unity of the field and to reflect on the shared histories, contemporary realities, and future destinies of continental Africans and African-descended people across the globe. Building on the work of previous congresses, ICAADS will continue the intellectual and political project of repatriating African Studies.

You can find out more about ASWAD’s involvement in the International Congress of African and African Diaspora Studies here: https://icaadscongress.com

To access the CFP (due March 15, 2023) and other important information, click here.