“African Studies in the Digital Age” – SCOLMA’s 2024 Online Seminar Series
Join us ONLINE for the first of five seminars in “African Studies in the Digital Age” – SCOLMA’s 2024 Seminar Series
About the Seminar: Digital Re-Curation of African Archives
This seminar explores the potential of the digital for the creative re-curation of archives. Parallel to the rise of the digital has been an explosion in interest in ‘the archive’ by creative practitioners. In recent years artists, writers and curators have explored and critiqued archives with increasing urgency through multiple forms of intervention and re-presentation of historical collections. Nowhere has this trend in artistic practice been more lively or more vital than where it addresses colonial archival legacies through creative activism: voicing silences, challenging colonial narratives and restituting lost inheritances.
This conversation, chaired by Lydia Waithira Muthuma, brings together artist-curator Sana Ginwalla, founder of Zambia Belonging, Chao Maina, historian, digital heritage specialist and founding member of the Museum of British Colonialism with Sally Kent, Curator of the Royal Commonwealth Society collections at Cambridge University. Scroll to the bottom for each speaker’s full bio.
How does the digital open up possibilities for co-curation? What are the limits to this work? How can UK-based libraries and archives on Africa best support creative research and production?
This seminar will be held online via Zoom, to receive the link, please register on our Eventbrite page.
This FREE and ONLINE series of 5 seminars returns to the theme of a SCOLMA publication from 2014, ‘African Studies in the Digital Age’. Through a programme of discussion events we will be exploring some key ways in which this field has changed over that decade.
The season will address a variety of topics including digital repatriation projects, new modes of sharing, researching and teaching with digital collections, collecting born digital records, and the creative re-use and curation of digital heritage.
Each event in the season is intended to be structured as a conversation or round table, and the season will include collection holders, researchers, digital experts and artists from the UK, the African continent and beyond.
The focus, given our key audience, will in large part be on the practicalities and challenges of doing this kind of work. Our aim is to share knowledge, stimulate discussion on best practice, and identify key opportunities in the field.
Seminars will take place on Wednesdays from 13:00-13:55 GMT:
- January 31st
- February 14th
- February 28th
- March 13th
- April 17th
The topics, speakers, and registration information will be posted ahead of the respective seminar.
UK Library & Archives Group on Africa (SCOLMA) is a registered charity (No. 325086). As a non-profit organisation, we would love your help in continuing our mission to provide the best possible service for academics, students and other researchers working in African studies. We publish a journal, Africa Bibliography, Research and Documentation, run a directory of African Studies libraries, organise conferences and seminars, and network with other librarians, archivists and researchers, in the UK, Europe, Africa and the US. We also act as an expert body providing specialist advice.
Please consider donating any amount you can when you get your free ticket.