international conference Technology and Material Culture in African History: Challenges and Potentials for Research and Teaching (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, January 4 – 8, 2023)
Call for Papers and Roundtables
Technology and Material Culture in African History:
Challenges and Potentials for Research and Teaching
An international conference, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, January 4 – 8, 2023
The conference seeks to consolidate and foster the further development of history of technology and material culture in Africa. By gathering scholars from Tanzania and across Africa, as well as colleagues from other continents, the conference will demonstrate the discipline’s high degree of relevance—to the research and teaching of history and adjacent fields, as well as to contemporary political agendas. The organizers wish to use this event to discuss how historians of technology and material culture may contribute to the writing of a “usable past” for further generations.
The organizers invite historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, geographers, sociologists, and urban scholars to discuss the potentials of interdisciplinary and international collaboration around present intellectual, social, technological, and environmental challenges in Africa and globally.
There have been growing initiatives to integrate Africa into the global history of technology and material culture, but such efforts rarely focus on issues of teaching. Considering the ongoing curricular review at African universities, it is a pressing concern to discuss the potentials of including the history of technology and material culture in Bachelor and Masters programs. The organizers are convinced that the discipline of history needs to include an African perspective and showcase Africa’s contribution to global history of technology and material culture. Therefore, the conference focuses on policies, practices, and use to rethink the historiographic role played by material artifacts and systems. We believe there is a certain urgency in researching, writing, and teaching the history of technology and material culture from a truly African perspective.
By giving participants an opportunity to discuss existing research projects and teaching programs, the organizers aim at laying the foundation for an international network of historians of technology and material culture in Africa. We thus ask interested teachers and researchers from Africa and beyond to contribute with standard workshop sessions and papers, roundtable discussions, and further innovative formats. Proposals may be on any thematic area in history of technology and material culture, for examples see the full CfP and contact mail here: CfP Dar HoT Conference January 2023.
Submission deadline 31 August 2022
This unique event will be organized by the History Department at University of Dar es Salaam in collaboration with the ERC-funded research project “A Global History of Technology, 1850-2000” at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany, the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), and the Foundation for the History of Technology in the Netherlands.
Representatives of leading scientific journals will be present at the event.