In August 2026, the Swiss Society for African Studies (SGAS/SSEA) and the Association for African Studies in Germany e.V. (VAD) will jointly hold their respective biennial conferences in Basel, Switzerland. The conference hosted by the ZASB Research Network Africa at the University of Basel connects scholars based in Europe, Africa, and beyond and welcomes participants from all career levels. The conference theme African Perspectives on Global Transformations proposes a framework that responds to increasingly urgent calls for decolonization, epistemic justice, reparations, climate justice, and restitution. It brings together approaches to examine past, present and future global transformations from a broad spectrum of disciplines and thematic areas.
The call for panels was published on 1 April 2025 and by 15 August 2025 we received 159 panel and roundtable proposals. The Scientific Committee with the assistance of the Review Committee composed of scholars from both associations selected and 77 panels, 5 roundtables, and 4 workshops, corresponding to an acceptance rate of 54 percent. The three conference days will each feature three panel sessions with a maximum of 15 parallel events. The panels are organised in the following thematic streams:
- Studying Africa, understanding the world (8 panels)
- Diaspora, cosmopolitanism, and African identities (9 panels)
- Politics and governance (10 panels)
- African positions in changing world orders (5 panels)
- Planetary health, urbanization, and natural resources (17 panels)
- Technology and digitalization (7 panels)
- Lifeworlds and sociality (4 panels)
- Arts, language, and cultural expression (10 panels)
- Memories, histories, archives, museums (7 panels)
Paper submission
Please submit your paper proposition to one of the accepted panels via the conference website before 11 January 2026.