UC Berkeley–Stanford African Studies Graduate Conference 2026
March 6th, 2026
Disruption/Resilience: Institutions, Memories, and Belonging in Africa
This conference invited papers that examine how African societies and their diasporas have confronted, and continue to navigate, moments of profound upheaval, including colonial conquest, slavery, war, displacement, disablement, climate change, economic crises, political transitions, and globalization. We define disruption as sudden or prolonged disturbances that destabilize established structures, practices, or worldviews, and resilience as the strategies, practices, and adaptations through which African individuals and communities endure, resist, or creatively respond to such challenges.
We also invited papers that analyze how resilience has been built, contested, and expressed through African political, social, cultural, spiritual, architectural, and intellectual life across diverse historical and regional contexts. The conference particularly encourages contributions that examine the interplay between institutions, both formal and informal, memories, individual, collective, and archival—and identities—local, national, and transnational. By contextualizing disruption and resilience as intertwined forces, we seek to illuminate the creative strategies, enduring struggles, and adaptive practices that have shaped African histories and institutions and that continue to inform African and diasporic futures. We welcome interdisciplinary perspectives from history, anthropology, literature, linguistics, geography, political science, economics, development studies, religious studies, gender studies, disability studies, Black Studies, and related fields.
Possible topics included, but are not limited to:
Nationalism, Pan-Africanism, Black Studies, and Transnational Connections: African identities and institutions within and beyond the continent.
Memory, Heritage, and Archives: Disruption, evolution, and resilience in oral histories, material culture, indigenous knowledge, and the politics of remembering.
Digital Futures and New Institutions: Challenges and promises of technology, social media, artificial intelligence, and reimagined spaces of identity and memory.
Language, Arts, Music, Sound, Performance, and Literature: Cultural production, sound studies, and linguistic institutions as sites of memory and identity-making.
Gender and Generational Dynamics: Women, men, youth, and intergenerational shifts in identity and institutional formation.
Disability Politics and LGBTQ+ Belonging: Histories, identities, and struggles for inclusion.
Resilient Economies: Informal markets, cooperatives, and African entrepreneurship.
Conflict, Migration, Displacement, and Disablement: War, mobility, and the reconstruction of institutions.
Environmental Sustainability, Geography, Urban Planning, and Green Energy: Building resilience in the face of climate change and ecological crises.
Colonial and Postcolonial Institutions: Law, justice, medicine, and the interplay of customary and religious authority.
Organizing Committee:
Jane Mango Angar (UC Berkeley)
Mathew Oluwaseun Ayodele (Stanford University)
Sponsors:
Center for African Studies, Stanford University
Center for African Studies, UC Berkeley