Navigating Afro-Knowledges Exploring Practices and Theories in Digital Diaspora Studies
Category: Event
This conference invites participants to explore, challenge and reframe the theoretical and methodological tools currently used in the study of digital diasporas. It foregrounds the lived practices, creative expressions, and activist interventions that emerge from Afrodiasporic cyberspaces, positioning them not at the margins, but at the centre of digital cultural production and critique, with particular focus on Romance-speaking countries. We invite proposals from scholars, artists, and activists of all disciplines and backgrounds that explore these specific topics of interest, but other related topics are also welcome: Core Areas: • Travelling Theories & Concepts: Rethinking terms such as diaspora, identity, belonging and archive, among others, through Afrodigital experience. • Digital Afro-Knowledges & Poetics: How Afrodiasporic individuals generate, share, and transform knowledge across digital platforms, and the aesthetics of these Afrodigital creations. • Digital Archives & Counter-Memories: Community-driven digital archiving, oral traditions, memory activism, acts of digital reclamation, etc. • Narrative Resistance Strategies: Digital storytelling, podcasting, blogging, vlogging, transmedia narratives, ‘micro’-resistances (from meme cultures to hashtags), etc. • Platform Politics and Surveillance: Critical reflections on algorithmic bias, visibility, censorship, etc. • Diasporic Cartographies & Languages: Mapping belonging, dislocation, home, emotions and affects through digital geographies; code-switching, multilingualism, visual languages, and the politics of translation in Afro-digital practices. • Embodied Theory & Autotheoretical Practices: Black digital feminisms, queer Afrodiasporic digital cultures, and other approaches to merging theory with lived experience through activist, artistic, or community-based practices. • Methodological Interventions: Innovative, experimental, and participatory methods of researching digital content.
Initiator(s):
Francesca Aiuti
,
Julia Borst
,
Merveilles Mouloungui
,
Nelson Sindze Wembe
,
Ximena Cervantes Englerth
Deadline: 31.10.2025
Event
Navigating Afro-Knowledges Exploring Practices and Theories in Digital Diaspora Studies
17.06.2026 - 19.06.2026
Post created by: Lymor Wolf Goldstein