International Congress
African independencies. Processes, Imaginaries, Connexions
[Versão Portuguesa]
From December 10th to 12th, 2025
School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon
Organisation | CH-ULisboa and CLEPUL
Call for Papers | March 31st, 2025
Download Poster | Oficial Website
The year of 1975 on the African continent is marked by the independence of Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, Angola, and Mozambique, two years after the self-proclamation, by Guinea-Bissau, of its independence. This concluded a slow, complex, and multifaceted process of maturing social, economic, and cultural conditions, forming imaginaries, struggles, and resistances where the beginnings of national projects were forged. Necessarily plural, in the diversity of paths taken and the concrete circumstances of each country, this movement represents a significant stage in the broader framework of the struggles for self-determination that defined the second half of the 20th century, with the African continent as one of its main stages.
Over these fifty years, historiography, and, in general, the social and human sciences have produced a significant volume of knowledge, debates, and interpretative proposals on multiple dimensions of this historical fact. Between the gradual opening of archives and the memorial records, we have today a broad and highly diversified documentary corpus that supports an increasing body of research. New generations, using new languages, question this past in search of answers to the challenges of its contemporaneity. African independences are, therefore, living events, whose reverberations still mark the present time.
Half a century later, the Congress African independences: processes, imaginaries, connections aims to constitute a moment of reflection on the knowledge already produced, enabling, at the same time, the launch of new perspectives and approaches based on an intense dialogue between all disciplinary fields.
Themes
- Assessments, new perspectives, and future challenges for the historiography of African independences;
- Political action projects and dynamics in the anti-colonial struggle;
- Armed struggles and resistances: choices, tensions, and conflicts;
- Imaginaries of African independences: oral, written, and visual narratives;
- African independences and the world: international solidarities.
Calendar
- Announcement of the call for papers: October 2024
- Deadline for submission of paper proposals: March 31, 2025
- Announcement of selected papers: April 30, 2025
- Congress dates: December 10th to 12th, 2025
