The Congo Research Network is organising its fourth international conference, to be held at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford on 26-27 April 2018. The conference aims to bring together junior and senior scholars across the humanities and social sciences, sharing a common interest in the DRC. It specifically aims to provide space for interdisciplinary and comparative analyses and reflections, within and beyond Congolese Studies. Congo’s geographic centrality, the sustained demand for its resources on global markets, the dynamism of the country’s popular culture and its cross-border relations offer opportunities for collective thinking on the DRC’s place in broader dynamics of historical, social, political and economic change in Africa and beyond. Participants are invited to present panel proposals, as well as individual papers, research projects and works in progress. We are particularly interested in proposals falling under the following themes:
- Urban and popular cultures
- Ethnographic and historical research on “rural” Congo
- Cosmologies and religious practices
- State and statelessness
- Justice and lawmaking
- Labour and class
- Capitalism and natural resources
- Medias and visual cultures
- Gender and sexuality
- Violence and conflicts
- Global, trans-regional and cross-border approaches
- Colonial – postcolonial transitions
- Methodologies and epistemologies in Congo studies
Panel proposals (title + description of up to 750 words) should be sent to the organisers at congoresearchnetwork@gmail.com by 1 October 2017. Panel proposals should include at least two agreed papers. Individual paper proposals (title + abstract of up to 400 words) should be sent to the same email address by 15 October 2017. Proposals can be written either in French or English. Full papers in English are preferred. Decisions regarding accepted papers and panels will be sent out to applicants on 5 November 2017. Unfortunately, the organising committee cannot refund participants’ travel and accommodation expenses. Participants will also have to pay for their own meals during the conference.
Keynote address and panel: Congolese studies in the 1960s and its legacy for today
The conference will provide an opportunity for reflecting on more than half a century of research on Congolese cultures, history and societies. We are delighted that Prof Bogumil Jewsiewicki will give a keynote address on the history of Congolese studies: a roundtable of prominent scholars of Congo from different generations will reflect on the contribution of the ‘independence generation’ of Congolese studies for the study of Central Africa today and in the future.
CRN 2018 organising committee:
Thomas Hendriks
Benoît Henriet
Miles Larmer
Ramon Sarró
congo research network 
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