with the Young Academy of the Austrian Academy of Science

The Young Academy was doing its road show and so we were in St Pölten presenting our work! An outstanding program, listening to philsophers, music historians, physicists and vet researchers. And yes, I introduced my talk with the film Barbie… more to come in the final thesis! Here some more pics and infos: https://www.oeaw.ac.at/en/members/learned-society/young-academy/news-calendar/news-details/die-junge-akademie-bei-der-langen-nacht-der-forschung-noe

April 2024

My first research stay in Nairobi was in 2011: that is when I got hooked by Kenyan political history. Since then, I visited Kenya many times, but returning to Nairobi in April 2024 for my research felt very special. Looking for historical sources was not necessarily easier: there are always new places to go to. The main difference was that the people I met with knew my previous work and I knew their; we were eager to discuss Kenyan past and present, so each conversation went deeper.

As a research affiliate of the Department of History of the University of Nairobi, I was able to visit and explore the archives of the University of Nairobi. The university has an outstanding collections of historical documents related to all aspect of academic, social, political and economic issues. They also have an outstanding collection of colonial and postcolonial newspapers, which proved extremely useful for my research.

Since my project deals with parliamentary history, I also visited the library of the National Assembly. I was warmly welcome in the brand new Bunge Towers. Unfortunately for my research, the library only stores material directly related to parliamentary laws and debates and election material was nowhere to be found. But the library has of course all the parliamentary hansards – an important source to document’s women’s potential contributions to parliamentary debates. I was still looking for traces of elections petitions to document contested polling outcomes. Since there are not at the National Archives nor in the Parliamentary archives, I went to Nairobi High Court and Nairobi Supreme Courts to enquire about their archives. Some documents have been digitalised, and I was hoping to find more there. Unfortunately, the archives there are only partially sorted out and the organisation of the collections was nowhere to be found.

As to oral history, I was also able to meet again Mrs. Jael Ogombe Mbogo to continue our discussion about her outstanding life. Our previous discussions have nourished an article that has already been published (…). This time again, Jael welcomed me in her home, for breakfast and for lunch, and it was a real privilege sharing some of her time and listening to her story. Over the phone before my trip, I told her that I was impressed at the number of interviews she was giving. She replied saying people knew she won’t live much longer and so they are all hurrying up to get bits and pieces of her story. Jael is sharing her memories – I feel very privileged to be able to collect some of them.

Many thanks to the Design Service of the University of Vienna and to artist Aline Robin for her creativity!

Women and the history of state building in postcolonial African countries

6-7 June 2024

Department of African Studies, University of Vienna

As African countries became independent, being represented in state institutions was a political goal for many women, but undoing the legacy of colonial politics and gaining public visibility in the political field was no easy task. Despite serious difficulties and challenges, women vied for offices, campaigned, talked and wrote about politics, voted, and expressed their ideas within various institutions (organizations, political party, unions, local and national assemblies…). They were strategic actors in the processes of postcolonial state building. Yet, their history has remained confined to a separate section of African politics, the “women’s section”. While African political history has long been dominated by male actors, the history of African women in politics has been primarily written from the perspective of grassroots politics and women’s role in social and economic development projects. A new wave of scholarship has recently begun to address this discrepancy in the historiography, with scholars exploring the ways women have challenged established political orders “from the top”, from creative writing to frontal opposition to presidential rule.[1] This literature shows that African women’s politics must be placed at the heart of narratives of state building, party politics, governance and presidential rule, that political narratives need to be complexified, concepts rethought, and that new sources must be  sought to acknowledge African women’s complex modes of political imagination, action, and language.

Building on this trend, this conference aims to retrieve histories of African women’s contribution to the postcolonial politics of state building. Who were the women who vied for positions of power, how/why did they campaign (or were appointed), for which ideas? What did they achieve during their political mandates, which challenges did they face? What did they do afterwards, what impact did they have? Which sources are available to document their stories? What are the methodological challenges that emerge when retrieving these sources and/or writing these histories?

Case studies focusing on specific leaders, historical periods and/or countries are welcome. Papers may explore (but are not confined to) the following themes:

• Documenting generations of African female politicians: pioneers, outsiders, through the lens of elite reproduction…
• Documenting women’s modes of action in elite politics: via state and non-state organizations; informal and formal networks; African women’s roles in connecting multiple political spaces: at home, in local, national, or international politics.
• Documenting the lives of non-conventional actors and the politics of silencing, cooptation, or amnesia.
• Sources & Methodologies to retrieve women’s postcolonial political history; oral, visual, and/or material sources; personal testimonies.
• Political languages: use of symbolic political languages (motherhood, politicization of the body…); how precolonial forms of politics inform African women’s postcolonial politics/activism; feminist discourses (applying a longue durée perspective).
• Conceptual reflections: exploring the politics of “empowerment” and “disempowerment”; “women’s political space”…

Please send an abstract (250 words max) and a short biography (100 words) to womenafricanhistory2024@univie.ac.at before 15^th October 2023.

Limited funding is available to cover hotel and travel costs for participants based in African countries. Please indicate in your proposal if you require financial assistance.

Thank you!

The conference organizers – Anaïs Angelo and Sandra Benecchi

---

[1] See for example: Jacqueline-Bethel Tchouta Mougoué, Gender, Separatist Politics, and Embodied Nationalism in Cameroon (University of Michigan Press, 2019); Grace A. Musila (ed), Wangari Maathai’s Registers of Freedom (National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2020); Anna Adima, “Anglophone women’s writing and public culture in Kenya and Uganda, 1959-1976” (PhD diss., University of York, 2022). The film “When Women Speak” retracing Ghanaian women’s political history also makes a significant contribution in making African women’s political history accessible to a larger audience, see https://whenwomenspeakfilm.com.