Accueil > Actualités > Appels

AEGIS Summer School

AEGIS - Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies

The 2016 Summer School will focus on the theme of Urban Africa – Urban Africans : Emergent Spaces and Multiple Representations. The continental rate of urbanisation is currently the highest in the world, at the same time as the notional countryside comes both to mimic the city and be re-shaped by its dynamics (sometimes referred to as a process of ’deagrarianisation’). These fundamental changes are stimulating a growing body of research and publication on the topic of newly emergent urban spaces.

Rapid urbanization poses a challenge for governments and societies confronted with new mobilities, materialities, languages and identity politics forged within these emergent spaces. The aim of the School is to analyse a range of issues arising from Africa’s new urbanism, viewed from the standpoint of politics, critical geography, economics, religion and culture. Our interest is not only in the big towns that usually are at the fore of academic debates, but also small and medium towns. The School will also encourage the analysis of the relations between these urban spaces and their surrounding ’rural’ environment. The School will be structured around panels that are thematic as well as interdisciplinary. These will be facilitated by a senior researcher with a specific interest in the theme, who will present some of his/her own work in a plenary session. Papers in the thematic panels will be presented by the participating students and these will be circulated in advance. Both the senior researcher and the students will perform the role of discussants of these papers. Special attention will be given to methodological issues, conceptual reflections, the lessons to be drawn from comparison, and to the place of history in understanding contemporary political and social processes. Papers from across the full range of disciplines and regions are welcomed.

The following are indicative sub-themes, but should not be considered as definitive or exhaustive :
 Political Power
 Popular Culture
 (Social) Identity and Practices
 Religion
 Mobility and Immobility
 Political Economy, Work and Livelihood

The deadline for submitting proposals is 29 February 2016

For more details please write to :
Local Organizing Committee : CagliariSummerSchool@gmail.com

AEGIS Summer School 2016