Call for Panellists

Archives, governance and policy-making on the African continent

ECAS 2019 (Edinburgh)

Vincent Hiribarren (King’s College) and Fabienne Chamelot (Portsmouth) are convening a panel for the next European Conference of African Studies (ECAS) in Edinburgh (12-14 June 2019). We are looking for papers on the relationship between archives and good governance, the recent digitisation of African archives or the concept of archival decolonisation.

Our panel seeks to reflect on the archival practices in relation to governing and nation-building. Essential to accountability and transparency, archives are also crucial to the support of a national narrative and to connecting people together within a state. With the rise of digital technology and globalisation, their role as governing tools is all the more important, both perpetuating and prompting new approaches to citizenship and state. For instance, while colonial archives often symbolise a disruption in the national history, the wave of archival digitisation that the African continent currently undergoes seems to offer opportunities to revisit access to governmental and historical records and documents. Yet these issues prompt important questions which go from intellectual property to sovereignty, not to mention economic stakes or recent initiatives to decolonise archives.

If you would like to submit an abstract, please use the link below:

https://nomadit.co.uk/ecas/ecas2019/conferencesuite.php/panels/7532