Progress, change and development: past, present and future

An international conference, to be held at University of Portsmouth, 4- 6 June 2015, with the generous support of the Centre for European and International Studies Research and the Society for the Study of French History.

 The aim of this interdisciplinary conference will be to bring some of the generation who were involved in attempts to bring about change in the 1960s and 1970s together with researchers, theorists, practitioners, activists from the younger generations today. It will examine and debate how progress and development were conceptualised, practised and imagined during the periods of national liberation struggles, of decolonisation and its aftermath, of political and social upheaval and change. It will analyse successes and failures on all levels and explore new ways of thinking that are being developed at the present time, particularly those that break with the prevailing consensus.

By bringing the different generations into contact and interaction with each other, it is hoped to create a forum to facilitate the transfer of knowledge and understanding of the earlier period, on the one hand, and the expression and elaboration of new ideas of progress and development and how they might be achieved, on the other.

It will look at specific struggles in North and Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America, as well as the international links connecting these movements. Possible themes will include the following:

• National liberation and nation-building
• Globalisation and anti-capitalism
• Transnational movements
• Economic and social development
• Theoretical, philosophical and other considerations
• Race
• Gender
• Education and new academic approaches
• Young people
• Progress in the cultural field
• Media, information and communication

Confirmed speakers include Samir Amin (Third World Forum, Dakar), Alice Cherki (psychoanalyst), Beïda Chikhi (Université de Paris – Sorbonne), Catherine Lévy (CNRS) and Jacques Sauvageot (Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Rennes).

Proposed papers should be 20 minutes in length, in English or in French. Please send an abstracts of no more than 250 words to francophone@port.ac.uk by the extended deadline of Friday 16^th January 2015.

We are delighted that we are able to welcome Agnes Fallah Kamara-Umunna to the Centre of European and International Studies Research at the University of Portsmouth, on Wednesday 26 November 2014.

Agnes is a Liberian-born journalist, radio producer/presenter, community activist and author. After the end of the Civil War, she hosted the radio program Straight from the Heart in the capital city of Monrovia and was a statement-taker for the Liberia Truth & Reconciliation Commission. She has worked with former child soldiers and warlords, as well as their victims, in order to promote peace. She continues to volunteer for the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, taking oral statements from Liberians now living in the United States. She is the author, with Emily Holland, of the book And Still Peace Did Not Come. The book chronicles her story of survival and her development from a single mother to one of the most powerful voices in Liberia’s peace and reconciliation movement.

Agnes is about to return to Liberia to open the first health clinic focusing on women’s health issues.

Agnes’ presentation will take place on Wednesday 26 November, 2-4pm, in Park Building 2.16. All welcome.