The Centre of African Studies’ 40th Anniversary Celebration

CAS 40th Anniversary

Join us on Friday, April 25, 2025, from 13:00 to 19:00, as we celebrate 40 years of academic excellence and collaboration in African Studies at the University of Copenhagen.

This milestone event will bring together past and present members of our community for an afternoon of celebration.

We look forward to celebrating this important day with you through academic reflection, inspiring discussions, and joyful reunions—culminating in a reception filled with music, conversation, and shared memories.

Program:

13:00 – 16:00 – Søren Kirkegaard Auditorium, Faculty of Theology

  • Arrival and words of welcome by the Dean of Faculty and the Director of the Centre of African Studies
  • Keynote lecture: Africa as Theory: A proposition for African Studies by Professor Divine Fuh, University of Cape Town
  • Coffee & tea break
  • The Centre of African Studies: past and future
  • New research perspectives in African Studies: CAS early careers scholars’ panel

16:00 – 19:30 – Market Square, Faculty of Theology

  • Reception
  • Poster presentation of CAS MA theses and graduate careers
  • Music by Bon Noir trio
  • DJ

Registration

Please register here

Registration deadline is on Friday 18th April 2025

Keynote lecture: Africa as Theory: A proposition for African Studies by Professor Divine Fuh, University of Cape Town:

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Centre for African Studies at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, I tackle the troubling question of the future of African Studies for Europe, Africa and the global community. What opportunity does African Studies offer us for understanding and resolving the current conundrums in which we are globally entangled? My main call is a conceptual, theoretical, methodological and analytical shift from Africa as place, Africa in theory and theory in Africa towards rendering Africa as theory – that is, supposition, propositional scientific framework or system of ideas – for systematically organising, studying, understanding, analyzing and explaining the world. The critical question thus posed is how to transpose Africa as theory. To make my case, I embrace and engage the decolonial question, setting it up as a paradigm shift, and an imperative for constructing Africa as framework. My proposition is for African Studies as a strategic convening space for pluriversalities, laboratory for inter/trans-disciplinary methodologies and for advancing new projects dignity and cohabitation. Global Europe, I argue, needs decoloniality and African Studies now more than ever before, to advance and establish itself as a viable, future life project; hence the inevitable necessity to embrace the push for transformative research collaborations and partnerships.

Bio:

Taah Abongnelaa, Divine Fuh, from Mankanikong in Bafut, Cameroon, is the Director of HUMA – Institute for Humanities in Africa at the University of Cape Town where he is associate professor and Head of the Department of Anthropology. He is trained in Cameroon, Botswana and Switzerland. His research focuses on the politics of suffering and smiling, particularly on how people seek ways of smiling in the midst of their suffering. He has done work in Cameroon, Botswana, Senegal and South Africa. His currently interested in the life of ideas, the political economy of African knowledge production, and centring African epistemologies.