IJR Public debate titled “Reconciliation and Betrayal”
Call for Presentations 2016 Conference on: Persistent Racial Problems: Political, Cultural, and Religious Responses
The 2016 Transatlantic Roundtable will convene in Trinidad and Tobago:
- 60 years after the watershed election in that nation that consolidated black political empowerment and charted the course for te nation’s 1962 independence, and 50 years after the independence of its southern Caribbean neighbors Barbados and Guyana;
- 60 years after the launch of a wave of independence in Africa that from Sudan’s independence in 1956 to Lesotho’s in 1966 included 30 sub-Saharan African countries;
- 60 years after the successful conclusion of the Montogmery Bus Boycott which helped mobilize the nationwide mid-20th century Civil Rights Movment in the USA; and
- 70 years since the post-World War II beginnings of mass migration from Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia to the UK.
Despite the gains in the decades since those historic markers, however, African-descended communities across the globe continue to suffer effects of political, economic and social inequities whose consequences include alarming levels of disease, unemployment, incarceration, and systemic violence. Our 2016 conference will examine public policy responses (including reparations discussions), expressions of cultural resistance, and faith-centered responses (including interfaith). We invite proposals outlining “best-practices” and practical dimensions as well as conceptual and applied scholarly papers that explore these or related themes.
Please submit 150-250 word abstracts by EXTENDED DEADLINE April 30, 2016 to Dr. R. Drew Smith (Pittsburgh Theological Seminary) rsmith@pts.edu or Dr. William Ackah (Univ. of London) w.ackah@bbk.ac.uk .
Deadline April 30, 2016
The GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, in cooperation with the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation (GovInn) at the University of Pretoria invites submissions for a two-day workshop on the legacy of armed conflicts: Southern African and comparative perspectives.
Achieving stable peace, building accountable state institutions and (re)establishing trust are core challenges in the aftermath of an armed conflict. While violent conflicts are disruptive, they also offer opportunities for political and social change. However, the passage from conflict to sustainable peace is a complicated process. Formal and informal processes taking place during the war and in its immediate aftermath can have profound long-term implications. Even in Southern Africa, which has been heralded as a ‘success story’ of peacebuilding, past wars continue to shape politics and societies in many ways.
This event will bring together scholars based in Southern Africa and GIGA researchers in order to reflect on the legacy of conflicts for sustainable peace. We are particularly interested in contributions that focus on one of the three following topics and that are either based on intra-regional (between African cases) or cross regional (between Africa and other regions) comparison or that apply broader theories or concepts to South African or other African cases.
- Peace processes and long-term peacebuilding
- Former armed actors in post-conflict societies
- Violence and trust in the aftermath of conflict
Deadline: April 30th, 2016