Programme

Location: Klooster Grauwzusters, Promotiezaal, Lange Sint-Annastraat 7, Antwerp

• 8:30 a.m.: Registration with coffee
• 9:15 a.m.: Welcome: Marnix Beyen, University of Antwerp, Belgium
  
• 9:30 a.m.: 
  
  • Opening keynote lecture: Pedro Monaville, McGill University, Canada
    The shape of Patrice Lumumba’s heart (part of the Lumumba Legacies Series)
    
    

10:30 a.m.: PANEL 1:
Speaking back to empire: Parliament, representation, and contests for political authority during and after empire
Chair: Pasi Ihalainen, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

• Lauren Lauret, Leiden University, the Netherlands ‘Not all Indies’ hands can become members of Parliament’: Returning colonial expatriates and 19th century Dutch government culture
• Karen Lauwers, University of Helsinki, Finland  ‘This is not a petition properly speaking’: How letters from colonial Algeria challenged French notions of ‘appropriate’ political practices (1890s–1930s)
• David Thackeray, University of Exeter, UK ‘They do not understand the European method of dealing with matters’: Maori claims for representation and the settler state in late 19^th century New Zealand
• Richard Toye, University of Exeter, UK ‘Anytown joins lobby for fairer deal for world’s poor’: Mass lobbies against world poverty in Thatcher’s Britain
• Anubha Anushree, University of Delhi, India 'Democratizing decolonization: Perspectives on approaching decolonization through the Indian Anti-Corruption Movement'
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• 12:00 p.m.: Lunch break (meals not provided) 
• 1:00 p.m.: 
  • Keynote lecture: Roland Ndille, University of Buea, Cameroon
    Political history and the politics of history education in Africa: Between state exigencies and decolonial necessities

2:00 p.m.: ​ PANEL 2:
Female perspectives: Decolonization, power, and gender
Chair: Margot Luyckfasseel, University of Antwerp, Belgium​

• Adaugo Pamela Nwakanma, University of California Irvine, USA 'Decolonizing political histories: Nigerian women’s political and economic activism in global perspective'
• Anaïs Angelo, Institute for Cultural Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria 'Writing African women’s parliamentary history to decolonize the history of the African stat
  
• Yulia Gradskova, Södertörn University, Sweden 'Can the exploration of the gendered transnationalism at the periphery help decolonizing the Cold War history?'
  
  
• 3:30 p.m.: Coffee break 
  
  

4:00 p.m.: PANEL 3:
Practices of (de)-coloniality in Europe
Chair: Maarten Van Ginderachter, University of Antwerp, Belgium​

• Martina Moretti, University of Tuscia, Italy 'Imperial legacy in question: Cape Verdeans in Portugal addressing the effects of decolonization'
• Gauri Saxena, IHEID-Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland 'Finding respect in the neocolonial enterprise: British South Asian doctors in the historical and contemporary landscapes of the NHS'
• Michele Debernardi, IHEID-Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland 'Money and the rule of law: A postcolonial perspective on the enlargement of the European Union'
• Michele Benazzo, IHEID-Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland 'Rediscovering anti-colonial struggles in Europe: The Institute of Race Relations and Asian Anti-Racism in Britain'
• Emilio Vivó Capdevila, University of Antwerp, Belgium 'Decolonizing Francoism: Coloniality of power and coloniality of knowledge in Spanish foreign policy during Francisco Franco’s dictatorship'
  
  
• 5:30 p.m.: Reception until 7:00 p.m. 

• Location: Klooster Grauwzusters, Chapel, Lange Sint-Annastraat 7, Antwerp
  
• 10:00 a.m.: Welcome with coffee
  

10:30 a.m.: PANEL 4:
Decolonization, politics, and the history of ideas
Chair: Marnix Beyen, University of Antwerp, Belgium

• ​Josias Tembo, University of Applied Sciences Arnhem-Nijmegen, Netherlands 'Decolonizing Foucault’s conceptualization of power, the political, and Western political subjectivity'
•  Jonas Nabbe, Erasmus University College, Rotterdam, Netherlands '(Re-)drawing borders, mapping a region: Examining transregional agency and the politics in defining the ‘Middle East’
• David Manolo Sailer, Kiel University, Germany 'The semantics of the decolonial state: Time, sovereignty, and the erasure of alternative historiographies' - online
• Nathalie Kermoal, University of Alberta, Canada 'From historical political truth to speaking truth to power: The example of Canada'
• Rommel A. Curaming, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Brunei 'Marcos’ Tadhana project and the ambiguities of the decolonial critique'
  
  
• 12 p.m.: Lunch break (meals not provided)​
  
• 1:30 p.m.: ​
  • Keynote lecture: Adriana Salay, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
    Understanding the past, shaping the present: hunger and inequality in Brazil

2:30 p.m.: PANEL 5:
Decolonizing political history: With what sources?
Chair: Gillian Mathys, Ghent University, Belgium

• Juliette Bour, University of Antwerp, Belgium 'The words of genocidaires as a source of political history: Ethical and historiographical challenges'
  
• Philibert Nkurunziza, University of Pau, France 'Writing the political history of the Rwanda-Burundi border zone: Sources and methodology'
• Karine Ramondy, Paris, Panthéon-Sorbonne, France & Nadeige Laure Ngo Nlend, University of Douala, Cameroon 'Écrire l’histoire politique en commission: Rôle de la France dans la répression pendant la guerre d’indépendance camerounaise'
• Denis Samnike, University of Antwerp, Belgium 'The penitentiary institution in the DRC and in Cameroon, from colonial to postcolonial: Political history as a perspective for the ethnographic investigation'
  
  
• 4:00 p.m.: Coffee break

4:30 p.m.: PANEL 6:
Questioning the politics of empire: diplomacy, law, and trade
Chair: Burak Sayım, University of Antwerp, Belgium​

• Yigit Akin, Ohio State University, USA 'The twilight years of the Ottoman Empire (1918-1922) as its most international moment'
• Burak Bulkan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA 'Beyond Europe: Ottoman legalism and the universalization of international law'
• Andrés Landoni, CIECS-Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina 'Rethinking British merchant discourses on China: A decolonial approach to trade and identity in Guangzhou in the 1830s'
• Nissaf Sghaïer, UCLouvain, Belgium 'Premodern studies? Studying the Burgundian late Medieval political ideology through a postcolonial lens'
• Eline Ceulemans, University of Antwerp, Belgium 'Crucial connectors in translating (Belgian) empire? Transimperial interpreters of King Leopold II in late Qing China'

7:00 p.m.: Conference dinner

• Little Ethiopia, Paardenmarkt 14 (registration closed)

Location: Klooster Grauwzusters, Chapel, Lange Sint-Annastraat 7, Antwerp

• 9:00 a.m.: Welcome with coffee
• 9:30 a.m.: 
  • Keynote lecture: Jihane Sfeir, Université Libre de Bruxelles
    Resisting erasure: the making of archives and history in Palestine

10:30 a.m.: ​PANEL 7:
Institutional colonial trajectories
Chair: Julia Heinemann, University of Antwerp, Belgium

• Nick Majchrowicz, University of Antwerp, Belgium 'In the lion’s den: Small European and non-European acts of decolonisation within the Colonial College of Belgium (1920-1965)'
• Ronald Kroeze, Vrije Universiteit & Radboud Universiteit, Netherlands, Susan Legene, Vrije Universiteit, Netherlands, Farabi Fakih, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia, Bambang Purwanto, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia 'The politics of norm-setting and anticorruption in the Netherlands-Indonesian relationship (1870s-2010s): A reflection on the Colonial Normativity-project'
• Ngome Elvis Nkome, University of Buea, Cameroon 'Rethinking sources of African ethnographic collections in European museums: Unravelling postcolonial debates for restitution'
• Anne-Isabelle Richard, Leiden University, Netherlands 'Democratizing the Council of Europe: Decolonization by participation?'
• Christian Nnabuike Onoja, Makerere University, Uganda, University of Nigeria Nsukka 'Decolonizing justice system in Africa: An examination of the role of the judiciary in the 2023 Nigerian general election'
  
  
• 12:00 p.m.: Lunch break (meals not provided)
  
  

1:00 p.m.: ​PANEL 8: 
The divergent faces of colonialism: Central and East-Central Europe in the 19^th and 20^th centuries
Chair: Jorg Kustermans, University of Antwerp, Belgium

• Iwona Sakowicz-Tebinka, University of Gdańsk, Poland 'The Lithuanian question in ‘Kraj’ as an example of ‘colonized colonizers’ narrative'
• Barbara Klassa, University of Gdańsk, Poland 'Polish 19^th century historiography towards the Ruthenian/Ukrainian question'
• Arkadiusz Janicki, University of Gdańsk, Poland 'How the formers colonizers defended themselves against colonization and denationalization: The case of the Baltic Germans in the Kurland Governorate (Russian Empire) before the First World War'
• Bianca Sadowska, University of Gdańsk, Poland 'From the perspective of the colonizer: Alexandr Hilferding’s view on the Polish question'
• Nikolay Karkov, State University of New York at Cortland, USA 'Decolonize that: Dimitŭr Dimov’s Fiction and the Race Politics of Bulgarian State Socialism'
  
  
• 2:30 p.m.: Coffee break

3:00 p.m.: PANEL 9: 
Decolonization as a process
Chair: Henk de Smaele, University of Antwerp, Belgium

• Javed Iqbal Wani, Ambedkar University Delhi, India 'Dilemmas of a postcolonial state: Compulsions of governance and the face-lifting of colonial policing institutions in newly independent India'
  
• Cyprian Nanji, University of Buea, Cameroon 'Decolonizing political historiography: persistence of precolonial egalitarian structures in Ndian division, Cameroon'
  
• Gualamhuseyn Mammadov, Ege University, Turkey, Tural Abullazada, Independent 'Locating May 28 and April 28 in the modern historiography of Azerbaijan: What is needed to be decolonized?'
• Parand Danesh, EHESS, France 'Writing political history based on private archives: The case of martyrology photo albums during the Iran-Iraq war'
• Benson Kanyingi, University of Embu, Kenya (online), 'Mbeere voices in the Mau Mau struggle: A step towards decolonizing Kenya’s political history'
  
  
• 4:30 p.m.: Coffee break
• 4:45 p.m.: ​Closing Roundtable
  • Chair: Marnix Beyen, University of Antwerp, Belgium 
  • Panelists:
    • Barbara Klassa (University of Gdansk)
    • Karen Lauwers (University of Helsinki) 
    • Roland Ndille (University of Buea)
    • Adriana Salay (University of São Paulo)
    • Musa Sroor (Birzeit University)
    • Richard Toye (University of Exeter)