11th International Conference on Mande Studies 2021

Beyond Crisis and Insecurity: Cultural Creativity, Popular Struggle, and Social Change in West Africa

The 11th International Mande Studies Association Conference 16-19 June 2021 at Uppsala University, Sweden, was hosted by the Mande Studies Association (MANSA), and Uppsala University's Forum for Africa Studies. Due to the ongoing pandemic the conference was organized online.

The conference explored the prospects for peace and progress in a region too often stereotyped for conflict and instability. Over the last decades, the region has undergone multiple crises and insecurities, including civil war, population displacement, political turmoil, popular insurrection, and the health epidemics.

The 11th International Mande Studies Association Conference aimed to produce new understandings of how West Africans have been asserting their ability to mobilize resources from all domains of their lives in order to strategize and struggle for new solutions to ongoing challenges. The purpose was to stimulate scholarship that explores society and culture so as to highlight processes that build, construct, and affirm agency, peaceful coexistence, and social innovation.

Visit our conference web site here for more information and fulll conference programme.