Events

From 26 to 28 August 2026, the Swiss Society for African Studies (SGAS/SSEA) and the Association for African Studies in Germany e.V. (VAD) will jointly hold their respective biennial conferences in Basel, Switzerland. The conference hosted by the ZASB Research Network Africa at the University of Basel connects scholars based in Europe, Africa and beyond and welcomes participants from all career levels. Discussion and exchange will take place in 80+ panel, workshop and roundtable sessions with 500+ paper presentations.

The conference theme “African Perspectives on Global Transformations” proposes a framework that responds to increasingly urgent calls for decolonization, epistemic justice, reparations, climate justice and restitution, under the conceptual header of planetary health and cosmopolitan flourishing. Based on this framework, the conference brings together approaches to examine past, present and future global transformations from a broad spectrum of disciplines and thematic areas.

Conference Keynote: “The Agrarian Structure and Contradictions of Social Reproduction in Africa”

Lyn Ossome (Associate Professor and Director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research, Makerere University, Uganda

Distinguished Carl Schlettwein Lecture 2026 (title to be defined)

Nomusa Makhubu, Professor of Art History at the University of Cape Town