Interview with Noëlle Obers from our African Cluster Center at Rhodes University, Makhanda/Grahamstown, South Africa

Speaking on her short-term project, is Prof. Dr. Susanne Mühleisen, a professor of English Linguistics at the Uni Bayreuth. Her Cluster Project focuses mainly on advice giving and advice receiving in #Cameroon, something, which she refers to as “Practical Epistemology” in her video presentation. Ideally suited is the African context for the collection of data, as it envelops an undeniable multilingualism that has nested itself in all aspects of everyday life. Amongst the initial findings were Dr. Mühleisen’s observations that certain multilingual codes are organised around the very activities of advice, which means that a switch from language to another is triggered in some advice-giving contexts. #epistemology #multilingualism #AfricaMultiple #ClusterOfExcellence #ResearchProject #africa #linguistics #englishlanguage #research #UniBayreuth #bayreuth

Abdilatif Abdalla who was in Bayreuth as guest for the series of events on the Indian Ocean, in conversation with Clarissa Vierke, Professor of Literatures in African Languages at the University of Bayreuth. Abdilatif Abdalla is a Kenyan poet, publicist and university lecturer and considered one of the best-known Swahili poets of the present day. Since 1995, Abdalla has taught Swahili at the University of Leipzig.

For the third time, an event as part of the series "AfriKaleidoskop meets ARTE" took place on March 20th 2024. The Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth, in collaboration with the cultural broadcaster ARTE, invited the interested public to a presentation of the documentary "Senegal: From Paris to Dakar" followed by a discussion at the Kulturhaus Neuneinhalb in Bayreuth. Dr Lamine Doumbia, research associate at the Institute for Asian and African Studies at Humboldt University in Berlin, and Dr Ibrahima Sene, research associate at the Chair of History with a focus on African history at UBT, were available for the subsequent discussion. Senegal: From Paris to Dakar - a report by Jean Yves Cauchard, Gaspard Baudry, Sylvain Kasper and Valentin Barrault (24 min.) Six years ago, Ibrahima Sylla, a former cab driver from Paris, founded "Salam Transport", a private bus company that connects Dakar with many cities. Today it is the number 1 in Senegal. Coumba Sow had a good job as a manager in a French bank, but she took a year off to set up "PariSénégal", an agency with which she helps Senegalese French people return to their homeland. Bakary Coly was employed by the French state financial institution Caisse des Dépôts for 15 years. He founded a start-up in Senegal for delivery services with electric motorcycles. Between 2014 and 2019, Senegal recorded a growth rate of 6%, which is interesting for entrepreneurs with good ideas. The pandemic in Europe has also spurred many relocation plans to Africa. The French-Senegalese youth in France and Europe see these opportunities in their parents' homeland. Unlike many young people in Senegal, who are prepared to put their lives on the line for their dream of Europe.

"AfriKaleidoscope" - the film program of the Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth - showed a film in cooperation with ARTE for the second time. On 14 June 2023, the Cluster presented a film premiere. "YES WE CAN – die neue Schwarze Malerei" is a documentary film by Marion Schmidt that deals with the so-called "Obama effect" and, among other things, explores the question of whether the official portraits of the presidential couple, which were painted by African-American artists and generated a great response, were the beginning of a new era or merely the trigger of a short-lived hype. The portraits ensured that the focus is currently on a new generation of African American artists whose works are being noticed in the marketplace. The "Obama effect," however, is not limited to the United States. Throughout the Western world, attention to the diverse and powerful, predominantly figurative paintings of Black artists* has increased significantly. As part of her film project, filmmaker Marion Schmidt visited three of them in their studios: Jerrell Gibbs from Baltimore, whose portraits paint primarily against the common clichés of Black men; Peter Uka, who is in Cologne pursuing his memories of his Nigerian homeland; and Shannon T. Lewis, whose works explore what the experience of migration means, a topic that the artist knows from her own experience. In addition, the filmmaker met an important representative of the new generation of Black artists in London: the painter Michael Armitage. The son of a Kenyan mother and a British father, he grew up with Kenyan art. Although what Armitage relates in his paintings is invariably set in East Africa, he has also studied the greats of the European art canon in depth. Following the exclusive premiere screening of the documentary, scholars* from the University of Bayreuth discussed her film and the motivation behind her project with filmmaker Marion Schmidt. The discussion focused, among other things, on the questions that the film also pursues: Is the art of the African diaspora perceived differently today than it was a few years ago? Is the Obama effect also being felt in Africa or Germany, and what developments are there in terms of reception and appreciation of Black art?

The film program "AfriKaleidoscope" enters a new round. In cooperation with @ARTEde, the European culture channel the Cluster of Excellence "Africa Multiple" presents a series of films that focus on various important topics of the African continent. The first film is "Looted Art in Benin City," from the current series "Africa's New Museums" produced by ARTE. It was shwon in May 2023, at @kunst-undkulturhausneunein8931 in Bayreuth. The film by Jean-Alexander "Sacha" Ntivyihabwa is dedicated to the equally famous and controversial Benin Bronzes, the most important art treasure of the Edo, which were looted by the British army from the palace of the ruler of the Kingdom of Benin in today's Nigeria in the late 19th century and sold off to museums in the global North, including Hamburg. After the film presentation, the filmmaker engaged in a discussion with the audience and scholars from the University of Bayreuth on the topic of restitution of art objects. Jean-Alexander "Sacha" Ntivyihabwa, born in 1964, is a studied Africanist, historian and passionate music and culture freak. Sacha Ntivyihabwa lives out his enthusiasm for TV making as managing partner of Signed Media, which is represented with its programs in the most important TV markets worldwide. In addition, Ntivyihabwa is also the founder of the anti-racist media watch association the "Brown Mob" and serves as an advisor to the association "Schotstek - scholarships for people with a migration background. He incorporates his intercultural experience and expertise into his TV programs and shares it as a speaker and lecturer at foundations and universities. The discussion was moderated by Prof. Dr. Ute Fendler, Chair of Romance Literary Studies and Comparative Literature with a special focus on Africa, and Dr. Cassandra Mark-Thiessen, historian and Junior Research Group Leader in the Cluster of Excellence.

The film program "AfriKaleidoscope" enters a new round. In cooperation with @ARTEde, the European culture channel the Cluster of Excellence "Africa Multiple" presents a series of films that focus on various important topics of the African continent. The first film is "Looted Art in Benin City," from the current series "Africa's New Museums" produced by ARTE. It was shown in May 2023, at @kunst-undkulturhausneunein8931 in Bayreuth. The film by Jean-Alexander "Sacha" Ntivyihabwa is dedicated to the equally famous and controversial Benin Bronzes, the most important art treasure of the Edo, which were looted by the British army from the palace of the ruler of the Kingdom of Benin in today's Nigeria in the late 19th century and sold off to museums in the global North, including Hamburg. After the film presentation, the filmmaker engaged in a discussion with the audience and scholars from the University of Bayreuth on the topic of restitution of art objects. Jean-Alexander "Sacha" Ntivyihabwa, born in 1964, is a studied Africanist, historian and passionate music and culture freak. Sacha Ntivyihabwa lives out his enthusiasm for TV making as managing partner of Signed Media, which is represented with its programs in the most important TV markets worldwide. In addition, Ntivyihabwa is also the founder of the anti-racist media watch association the "Brown Mob" and serves as an advisor to the association "Schotstek - scholarships for people with a migration background. He incorporates his intercultural experience and expertise into his TV programs and shares it as a speaker and lecturer at foundations and universities. The discussion was moderated by Prof. Dr. Ute Fendler, Chair of Romance Literary Studies and Comparative Literature with a special focus on Africa, and Dr. Cassandra Mark-Thiessen, historian and Junior Research Group Leader in the Cluster of Excellence.

This video documents the public discussion following an ARTE screening hosted by the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the Kulturhaus Neuneinhalb (Bayreuth) on April 15, 2026. The event featured Episode 1 of the ARTE documentary series “Afrikas vergessene Geschichte - Wer war Jan Conny” (Africa’s Forgotten History), presented as part of the “AfriKaleidoskop meets ARTE” screening series. Following the screening, the discussion brought together filmmaker Ntivyihabwa Jean-Alexander and historian Dr. Cassandra Mark-Thiesen, offering insights into the film’s themes and their broader historical and societal contexts. The conversation engages with questions of history, memory, and representation, continuing the dialogue initiated by the film within an interdisciplinary and public setting. 👉 Note: The discussion is held in German.

AfriKaleidoskop meets ARTE Operation Afrika: DIE JAGD NACH DEN ROHSTOFFEN DER ZUKUNFT 18.12.2024 | 7:00 pm CEST Kulturhaus Neuneinhalb, Gerberplatz 1, 95445 Bayreuth, Germany

On 8th May 2025 the Cluster of Excellence hosted another event within the frame of our well-received cinema lecture series AfriKaleidoskop meets ARTE at Kulturhaus Neuneinhalb in Bayreuth. It was an exclusive preview screening of ARTE of the first part of the three-part documentary series Südafrikas Weg aus der Apartheid (in German, translated from the original “Free at last: Unsolved stories of Apartheid”), a coproduction of the renowned female South African film maker and actress Xoliswa Sithole (winner of BAFTA prices), and the Dutch investigative journalists Misha Wessel and Thomas Blom. Teil 1: Suche nach Antworten (in German with English subtitles) was screened and followed by a panel discussion with Cluster scholar Patricia Pinky Ndlovu-Gatsheni, the filmmaker Thomas Blom and a subsequent Q&A session with the audience. This part of the event was recorded and made available here on YouTube and in the event media hub of ARTE.

As part of the Cluster's Annual Conference on "Spatialities" Christine Vogt-Williams and Epifania Amoo-Adare talked about Amoo-Adare's book "Spatial Literacy - Contemporary Asante Women's Place-Making". A central premise informing the concept of Critical Spatial Literacy is the decryption of specific codes found in the built environment so as to understand how these affect people’s social lives, cultural practices and sense of place. The conversation addresses how Critical Spatial Literacy might work as a conceptual frame to explore how the social and economic lives of women of (continental and diasporic) African descent have been constituted, situated and enacted in contemporary spatialities. One salient point concerns how the concept might allow for African feminist and womanist responses to uneven development. Epifania Amoo-Adare is an independent scholar, who is interested in (un)thinking science through art and other radical approaches. She is currently based in Accra, where she is seeding Biraa Creative Initiative (BCI). Epifania has a Ph.D. in Education from UCLA and is a RIBA Part II qualified architect. Born in London, and raised in Nairobi, Cape Coast and Accra, Epifania also has over 25 years of experience working in various flelds, including education and international development, within locations like Afghanistan, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Qatar, the United Kingdom and the United States. Her post-disciplinary interests span diverse topics such as creative writing, critical pedagogy, decolonial thinking, epistemology, feminism(s), spirituality, spatial theories, and urbanization.

"A Black Sense of Place": An ICDL Keynote Conversation with Prof. Katherine McKittrick This keynote conversation with renowned Black feminist geographer Katherine McKittrick, that took place at the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence's Annual Conference 2023, considers knowledge production processes and research practices from specifically Black spatializing vantage points, which are relevant to the transdisciplinary field of African Studies. The term 'field' is itself a spatial term concerning the conceptualisation of African Studies as a plethora of knowledge production sites which encompass epistemic perspectives from geopolitical and geophysical locations on the continent and the diverse African diasporas. McKittrick's "Dear Science and Other Stories" (2021) combines poetic approaches with an erudite Black epistemic politics concerned with Black histories and how these have contributed to the intersectional spatialization of bodies read as Black. Here the term 'Black' transports more nuanced political, poetic and intellectual aggregates of being - rather than a mere racial category built on colonial logics. Thus this conversation is meant to sound and map distinct Black epistemic values through intersectional readings of power relations in structural, cultural and disciplinary sites of knowledge production. Notably the concept of the intersection and its accompanying socio-political and epistemic identity vectors are in and of themselves spatialising metaphors. https://www.africamultiple.uni-bayreuth.de/en/news/2023/2023-10-31-Cluster-conference/index.html

As part of the Cluster's international conference on "Spatialities" Patricia Daley gave this keynote speech titled: "Learning Disobedience in African Studies: Producing Defiant Scholarship on Migration and Refugees". Patricia Daley is a Professor of Human Geography of Africa at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Jesus College. Her research interests focus on forced migration in Eastern and Central Africa. In the School of Geography and the Environment, she is a member of the Political Worlds: Place, Power, Politics research cluster, which seeks to develop novel and critical understandings of the relationship(s) between regimes of discipline and violence, geographies of the South, and postcolonial, feminist, decolonial and anti-racist work. She co-edited, with Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, "The Routledge Handbook on South-South Relations", and her most recent publication is co-authored with Amber Murrey (2023) and is entitled "Learning Disobedience, Decolonizing Development Studies" (Pluto Press).

As part of the Cluster's international conference on "Spatialities" Tendayi Sithole held a keynote lecture titled: "Azania: Extended Notes on Black Radical Thought - in Dialogue with Bruce Janz (UC Florida)". Tendayi Sithole is Professor in the Department of Political Sciences, University of South Africa. He is also a Senior Research Associate at the Institue for Pan-African Thought and Conversation, University of Johannesburg. Sithole's scholarly books are "Refiguring in Black" (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2023), "The Letter in Black Radical Thought" (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2023), "Mabogo P. More: Philosophical Anthropology in Azania" (New York: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2022), "The Black Register" (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020), and "Steve Biko: Decolonial Meditations of Black Consciousness (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016). His book "Black X: Liberatory Thought in Azania" is forthcoming with Wits University Press in 2024. Currently, Sithole is conducting research for a biography provisionally titled "Vinny da Vinci: A Portrait". Bruce Janz is Professor in the Department of Philosophy, co-director of the Center for Humanities and Digital Research, and core faculty in the Texts and Technology program, all at the University of Central Florida. He teaches and writes on African philosophy, cultural philosophy, contemporary European philosophy, digital humanities, and questions of place and space across many disciplines. He has taught in Canada, Kenya, South Africa, and the US. His most recent book is "African Philosophy and Enactivist Cognition: The Space of Thoght" (Bloomsbury, 2023).

MOHAMED MAKHOUKH, Calligrapher Designer and expert on Arabic Art and Language talks about Polyrhythm.

The third annual conference of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence takes place in Bayreuth and Makhanda (ACC Rhodes) from 6 to 9 July 2022. It is dedicated to the annual theme of Medialities and completes the thematic work of the previous academic year. As one of the four "heuristics" around which the cluster organises its collective theoretical and conceptual work, the topic Medialities serves as a guide for exploring the Cluster's core concepts. The conference offers members of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence a forum to present and discuss their latest research in the thematic field of Medialities in self-organised groups (panels). The conference thus creates a space for theoretical debates and intellectual exchange among members of the Cluster - including the African Cluster Centres at Moi University (Kenya), Rhodes University (South Africa), Joseph Ki-Zerbo University (Burkina Faso) and the University of Lagos (Nigeria). It will be held in a hybrid format to facilitate as much intercontinental exchange as possible. The conference programme features 3 keynote lectures 14 parallel thematic panel sessions 2 roundtable discussions 2 film screenings an artist event and a knowledge slam https://www.africamultiple.uni-bayreuth.de/en/index.html

On 18 May the University of Bayreuth will festively present Dr. Fatou Sow with the BIGSAS Honorary Doctorate. With this award, the Senegalese sociologist Dr. Fatou Sow – based at the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris – is recognised for her unwavering commitment to the cause of women and her outstanding scholarly achievements in feminist topics on the African continent. Sow is a veritable pioneer of gender studies and African feminism, who has worked at the forefront of women’s rights in West Africa and beyond for more than half a century. The award was first announced during her keynote lecture at the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence conference on 14 July 2021 and will now be festively celebrated on 18 May this year. The ceremony will take place on campus, however may also be attended online. Please register for either event format by visiting https://bigsas-award-ceremony.wr-events.de/

The BIGSAS Festival of African and African-diasporic Literatures, as an annual tradition, runs for three consecutive days as an entrance free event in the heart of Bayreuth, hosting writers, scholars and activists. Throughout this event, negotiations of wor(l)d making within arts, academia and activism are addressed, while re/visiting the un/making of collective knowledges and respective practices. Readings, performances, lectures, panel discussions, workshops and (street) music are composed to invite an interested audience from all over Bayreuth and beyond to become an intergenerational, transcultural, transregional, multidimensional community where strategies of inclusivism are practiced in a setting fraught with “unity in diversity” (Glissant). The festival opened with a demonstration FridaysForFuture+ on campus of the University of Bayreuth continued to the refugee house at Wilhelm-Buschstraße to arrive in the city center with a manifest through perfromances by BLESZ and Musa Okowonga. Successivly, the festival opened its 9th edition officially at the IWALEWAHAUS to enable a public access to topic centered around anti-racist and feminist discourses of crises and responsibility also in the context of environmental awareness. These issues were expressed in keynotes, readings, music and spoken word performances, an art exhibition and round table discussions. These events were all free of entry to the public domain. The festival is hosted by the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS) which is part of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence (funded by DFG). https://2019.bigsas-litfestival.com/ - Follow us on Social Media: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/pg/AfricaMultiple Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/exc2052/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/ClusterAfrica https://www.africamultiple.uni-bayreuth.de/

On 7 November 2024, the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth presented the prestigious ‘BIGSAS Journalist Award’, which honours outstanding journalistic contributions contributions to differentiated reporting on Africa in German-language print media. The 2024 award winners are Birte Mensing, Ruona Meyer and Bettina Rühl. The ceremony was moderated by Fatima Elmardiya Ahmed and Thierry Boudjekeu and accompanied by a keynote given by actor Eugene Boateng and musical acts by Sona Diabaté. For more information on the award please visit: https://www.africamultiple.uni-bayreuth.de/en/1_4-Public-engagement_-engagement1/BIGSAS-Journalist-Award/index.html

In July 2022 the Cluster's department „Internationalisation and Public Engagement“ organised a book reading with renowned author Ananda Devi. Born in 1957 in Mauritius, Ananda Devi began to be noticed at the age of 15 when she won a prize in an international short-story. She published her first collection of short-stories at the age of 19. Over the next nearly five decades, she has become one of the major literary voices of the Indian Ocean. Published by the French publishers Gallimard and Grasset, she has won numerous literary prizes. Her writing is characterised by an inner violence and a harsh outlook on modern society, especially with regard to the status of women. Her characters are trapped by the contrary forces of society, religion, human cruelty and the seismic faults of history. Their only recourse, in their solitary quest, is their lucidity and humanity. Despite the harshness of her themes, Ananda Devi brings to her writing a poetry and sensuality that shines a light in the midst of the darkness she explores. She has been translated in several languages and has received decorations from Mauritius, and also from France, with the title of Officier des Arts et des Lettres. In 2014 she received a major award from the Académie Française. The University of Silesia, Poland, conferred upon her a Honoris Causa doctorate.