Defiant Scholarship in Africa
21 June 2019
School of Geography and the Environment
University of Oxford

Three esteemed and interdisciplinary scholars will come together to speak on the contemporary political geographies of repression, resistance, racism and anti-racism in African societies. The focus of our conversation will be on the urgencies of identifying and creating ‘new concepts… [for] a new humanity’ (Rodney 1972).

The seminar coincides with the 39th anniversary of the assassination of the historian, activist and Pan-African scholar Dr. Walter Rodney in June 1980 in Georgetown, Guyana. On colonial and neocolonial education, Rodney wrote, ‘in the final analysis, perhaps the most important principle of colonial education was that of capitalist individualism. In Africa, both the formal school system and the informal value system of colonialism destroyed social solidarity and promoted the worst form of alienated individualism without social responsibility’. In our contemporary period, colonial hangover, neo-colonial intercessions and marketised interventions in African educational spaces serve to undermine, sometimes deliberately, the importance of critical and emancipatory scholarship. We will consider on-going and urgent questions of defiant scholarship in creating alternative political imaginaries.

Speakers: Dr. Nokuthula Hlabangane from the University of South Africa; Professor Michael O. West from Binghamton University; Professor Horace G. Campbell from Syracuse University and recent Kwame Nkrumah Africa Studies Chair at the University of Ghana.

This event is co-organised by Professor Patricia Daley and Dr. Amber Murrey, School of Geography & the Environment, University of Oxford. The event is sponsored by the School of Geography and the Environment’s Political Worlds research cluster and the Jesus College Major Research Grant Fund.

The event will be followed by a drinks and canapés reception, with catering by Wuntoyo – First Class Pan African Cuisine.

Location: Gottman A & B, School of Geography & the Environment, South Parks Road, OX1 3QY
Time: 3:30-7pm on 21 June 2019
RSVP: www.eventbrite.com/e/defiant-scholarship-in-africa-tickets-57925771542

For details, please contact amber.murrey-ndewa@ouce.ox.ac.uk.