CONFERENCE - Comparing the Copperbelt: Social history and knowledge production in Central Africa

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN:

Conference: Comparing the Copperbelt: Social history and knowledge production in Central Africa

18-19 June 2021

Online via Zoom

Click here for programme and abstracts. To register, email copperbelt@history.ox.ac.uk

Comparing the Copperbelt is an ERC-funded research project, running at the University of Oxford from 2016-2021. The project aims to examine the Copperbelt (in both Zambia and the DR Congo) as a single region divided by a (post-)colonial border, across which flowed minerals, people and ideas. It analyses how academic knowledge production (e.g. by the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute and CEPSI) shaped understanding of Copperbelt societies and it seeks ways to explore Copperbelt political culture and popular perceptions from a historical perspective. 

The conference, held in conjunction with Oxford’s African Studies Centre and Centre for Global History, represents the culmination of the project’s research and builds on workshops held in Kitwe in July 2018 and in Lubumbashi in July 2019. It aims to bring together researchers from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds to discuss the region’s shared histories and share ideas on social, environmental and cultural history. The conference also features a panel launching the project’s edited volume Across the Copperbelt: Urban & Social Change in Central Africa’s Borderland Communities (available Open Access here).

All welcome. To register, email copperbelt@history.ox.ac.uk