Important Dates

The Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, established in 2019 at the University of Bayreuth (UBT), annually starts its line of activities and events with the New Year Lecture. Conceived as the first get-together of all cluster members in each calendar year and open to the wider UBT public, the New Year Lecture features prominent speakers who address questions and concepts central to cluster’s agenda. The first New Year Lecture will take place on January 16, 2020 and will be given the Dean of the Cluster, Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Seesemann.

New Year Lecture "Figuring out How to Reconfigure African Studies"

“Africa Multiple: Reconfiguring African Studies” is the full title of the Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth that won the coveted funding of the Excellence Strategy of the German Federal and State Governments. However, drafting a successful proposal is one thing; setting up new structures is another. This lecture explores the various layers, levels, and intricacies implied in the reconfiguration of African Studies, and also highlights the conceptual shift required to steer the study of Africa in new directions.

Rüdiger Seesemann serves as the Dean of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence. He has held the Chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Bayreuth since 2011 and previously taught at Northwestern University Evanston, IL. As the deputy spokesperson and later spokesperson of the Institute of African Studies (2015-2019), he convened a group of scholars that was instrumental in taking African Studies at the University of Bayreuth to a new level. He has published extensively on various aspects of Islam in Africa, including recent works on theory and method in the study of Islam and Africa.
   

• Flyer New Year Lecture
  
• To access the live streaming on the 16^th at 4 pm, please follow this link.
• If the link does not work please try to copy the following URL into your browser:
  https://mms.uni-bayreuth.de/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.aspx#folderID=%22b9b56fca-3d21-42fa-9788-a97a00f9a473%22&query=%22New%20Year%20lecture%22&sortColumn=3&sortAscending=false