“Black Europe: A Field on the Move” is a one-day, interdisciplinary conference open to the Columbia community and members of the public.
Scholars across disciplines are increasingly treating “Black Europe” as a pertinent object of study. Yet much disagreement remains on what “Black Europe” is. Does Black Europe describe a place, an identity, an aspiration, or something else? Scholars oscillate between terms such as “Afropean,” “African-European,” and “Black European.” Moreover, while this is not the first conference on Black Europe, the institutionalization of Black European studies remains a work in progress, and views vary on whether Black European studies is an academic field, a subsection of Black Studies or African Diaspora Studies, or a reference point for a set of inquiries and practices that exceed the bounds of academic discipline. As a one-day conference, "Black Europe: A Field on the Move" encourages interdisciplinary conversation on these questions.
The conference is free to attend but registration is required. Attendees can register at https://tinyurl.com/BlackEurope2025.
Schedule
The conference will consist of four panel sessions and two keynote presentations:
Welcome address (10.30–10.45am)
- Monica MIller, Professor of Africana Studies, Chair of the Africana Studies Department, Barnard College
Panel 1: Defining Black Europe (10.45am–12.00pm)
- Annabelle Gilmore (Lambeth Palace Library, London) on eighteenth-century Black Atlantic history as Black British history
- Jenaba Samura (Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research, Berlin) on "Adventures in Afropea," or “Travelogues as Literary Deconstruction of the Colonial Gaze”
- Olivia Wyatt (Queen Mary University of London) on the politics of complexion within twentieth-century Black Britain
Afternoon keynote with lunch and beverage served (12.15–2pm)
- Kesewa John, lecturer in Black British History, Goldsmiths University of London
Panel 2: Studying Black Europe (2.00–3.05pm)
- Sue Lemos (University of Warwick) on rethinking the “political” and “labor” in late twentieth century Britain through historicizing the ‘Black Lesbian and Gay Movement’
- Frankie Chappell (University College London) on the complexities of researching Black feminist thought in ‘politically Black’ spaces, focusing on Black Women for Wages for Housework in the US and the UK
- Jordan Rogers (University of Miami) on Black queer storytelling practices in the UK and Belgium to suggest ways of thinking about Black genders and sexualities in postcolonial Black Europe
- Malika Stuerznickel (University of Michigan) on the ethnography of contemporary Black world-making in German allotment gardens
Panel 3: Institutionalizing Black Europe (3.15–4.20pm)
- Jessica de Abreu and Mitchell Esajas (The Black Archives, Amsterdam) on Otto and Hermina Huiswoud and the politics of Black Dutch radicals
- Deanna Lyncook (Queen Mary University of London) on challenging historical erasure through Black British History
- Jonelle Twum on the forming and ongoing development of Black Archives Sweden
Panel 4: Expanding Black Europe (4.30–5.45pm)
- Montaz Marché (independent scholar) on the histories of gender and race in early modern London
- Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon (University of Pennsylvania) on Black mixed-race relationships, marriages, and families in the Soviet Union and German Democratic Republic
- Faith Macharia (Yale University) on centering the Black African Experience in Rome
- Runnie Exuma (Princeton University) on the spectralization of trans-Saharan slavery within labor and mobility contexts in contemporary Tunisian society
Evening keynote followed by reception with drinks and hors d’oeuvres served (6.00–8.00pm)
- Audrey Célestine, Associate Professor, Institute of French Studies, New York University
Organizers and sponsors
Organizers: Rochelle Malcolm (PhD candidate, History), Mayaki Kimba (PhD candidate, Political Science), and Zarino Lanni (PhD student, Anthropology)
Sponsors: Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities, Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies, Arts and Sciences Graduate Council, European Institute, Department of Political Science, Department of Africana Studies (Barnard College), Department of Anthropology, Department of History, Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, Department of French, Small Axe Project, Department of Germanic Languages
