African Studies Library - Cambridge University

Neo, Cabral book display curator, posing with the display in the sunshine - come see it in the Library until 17th January 2025.

🔴🟡🟢 Amílcar Cabral, the famed revolutionary leader of the people of Guinea-Bissau & the Cape Verde Islands, lives on!

Celebrate Cabral's centenary with this extraordinary book display put together by our MPhil, Neo, on in the Library to January 17th.

Click the 🔗 in our bio to read more!

Ever used a thesis or dissertation as part of your research? If not, you probably will at some point in your academic career.

We recently moved our 100+ unpublished theses collection to our archive. Ask us about how they might improve your research!

Pamphlets donated by Leo and Julian Amery sprawled out on a desk in the African Studies Library.

📜We’ve accepted pamphlet correspondences from HMSO with East & South Africa c. 1921-26, donated by Leo Amery & his son, Julian. Both father & son were war correspondents with Leo having covered the Boer War.

Click the link our bio to view the full list and to request a viewing!

Happy #BlackHistoryMonth2024 - the Olusoga trio have brought us a treat just in time. This anthology of Black history facts would look great on your shelves! You can borrow it from us today 📚

‘Turning my life into something people can watch, pains me’: Wole Soyinka on having his memoir made into a movie | CNN Now aged 90, the first Black African to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature reflects on the movie “The Man Died,” his time in prison and his hopes for the future.

Have you seen 'The Man Died' yet? Wole Soyinka's prison memoirs have been made into a film - read his thoughts on it and its context: edition.cnn.com/world/africa...

BlueSky Invites for "Global South" scholars form This form was created to facilitate the sharing of invitation codes for Blue Sky which do not seem to be reaching "Global South" scholars who may not have the same network privileges as scholars in th...

If you know a "Global South" scholar, activist, member of NGO, journalist, etc who needs invite codes to bluesky, please ask them fill in this form: forms.gle/Sti3aVg3C7ZZ...

Open Cambridge is fully under way here - the Wren Library is open at the usual times (from 12pm to 2pm) today and tomorrow, but also on *Saturday from 10am to 4pm*. Join the queue as early as possible and enjoy a visit to our beautiful building and stunning collections!

image of the new Swahili reference collection - "Swahili sayings" behind text announcing the collection's arrival

🎺New Collection Alert 🎺

The Swahili Reference Collection, containing 25 items books and pamphlets of Poetry, Proverbs, Plays, Prose, Riddles, Fiction, and Superstitions c. 1952-1991 is now available for viewing.

Access the blog & full collection aid: asclibraryblog.wordpress.com/2024/09/11/s...

Embodying difference : critical phenomenology and narratives of disability, race, and sexuality / Simon Dickel.

Disability in Africa / Toyin Falola and Nic Hamel.

From Stories to History: The trek of people with disabilities to actualise self-advocacy in Tanzania / Primus Kalugendo

Black disability politics / Sami Schalk.

Black madness : mad Blackness / Therí Alyce Pickens.

The unteachables : disability rights and the invention of Black special education / Keith A. Mayes.

Work requirements : race, disability, and the print culture of social welfare / Todd Carmody.

The mark of slavery : disability, race, and gender in antebellum America / Jenifer L. Barclay.

Bodyminds reimagined : (dis)ability, race, and gender in black women's speculative fiction / Sami Schalk.

Hi Geraldo - thanks for the note. I'll copy the titles in a few replies here 😀

The Routledge handbook of postcolonial disability studies / edited by Tsitsi Chataika and Dan Goodley.

Between fitness and death : disability and slavery in the Caribbean / Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy.

A collection of pamphlets from the RCS collection that have been digitised as part of the "Creating new Connection: Shared digital curation of the RCS southern Africa collections" This material encompasses a diverse range of content and format from personal papers, manuscripts, diaries, drawings, watercolours, photographs, pamphlets, cartoons, newspapers and maps to directories, monographs, official publications and journals. There is good coverage of 19th and 20th century southern Africa. The material selected for digitisation was informed by conversations with researchers and practitioners in southern Africa. Several key themes emerged, including the need to draw out African voices and experiences wherever possible. Over 7000 images have been added to the collection page, selected from 23 archive collections and more than 40 print items.

📣 New digitised collection!

"Creating new connections: shared digital curation of the RCS southern African collections" at
@theul.bsky.social is complete!

7000+ images have been added to the collection page, selected from 23 archive collections & more than 40 print items.

🔗 in bio for more!

The 100+ book collection of the Tasker donation - Caribbean fiction - found in the English Faculty Library

White text on a red background explaining the origins of the tasker collection.

Calling Caribbean literature fans!

Did you know our English Faculty Library's "Tasker Collection" comprises over 100 Caribbean literature titles?

The EFL is just across the path from the Centre of African Studies - drop them an email at english@lib.cam.ac.uk for questions.

AfroLuso

4 book covers in a collage with a search bar over top with the title of the book display. - Black Disability Politics - The Mark of Slavery - Black Madness / Mad Blackness - Bodyminds Reimagined These works, along with the others on display, critically engage with societal understandings of disability, its social construction, disability politics, how language surrounding disability has been imported to Africa via colonialism, and its reimagination.

The book display in the Library. Come borrow and scan!

📘📗📕 Our April book display is up!

"Disability Studies and People with Disabilities in Africa & the Diaspora" is a curated selection of mostly eBooks you can access via searching iDiscover or by scanning the QR codes from the display.

Come borrow and scan!

"New exhibition" notice over a collage of archival material from the Royal Commonwealth Society Collection held in Cambridge University Library.

A new exhibition has landed in our Centre & Library!

Explore these brilliant collages of photo-copied Zambian archival material from the Royal Commonwealth Society Collection held at @theul.bsky.social

Full walkthrough video and info: www.instagram.com/p/C5TSQUKIebe/

🔗 in bio for more!

A poster showing the speakers for the 3rd seminar in SCOLMA's 2024 seminar series. Happening February 28th Online at 13:00-14:00 GMT. Registration required at the link provided.

A poster showing the dates for the SCOLMA 2024 seminar series. February 28th is up next, then March 13th, and April 17th.

Seminar 3 has opened for registration & our very own Jenni Skinner is chairing! Come see what we're all about.

Digital (Re)Connections & Dispersed Collections brings into conversation researchers working with material that has been dispersed by colonial violence.

Register at the link in our bio!

This is happening tomorrow!

Sign up now 🤠

A poster showing the speakers for the second seminar in SCOLMA's 2024 seminar series. Happening February 14th Online at 13:00-14:00 GMT. Registration required at the link.

A poster showing the dates for the SCOLMA 2024 seminar series. February 14th is up next, then February 28th, March 13th, and April 17th.

The 2024 SCOLMA Seminar Series continues!

📅 Feb. 14 - 13:00-14:00 GMT, Online

Seminar 2, Digital Resources for African Studies: Teaching & Research, hosts impressive speakers and will be as lively as our first Seminar!

Register now at the link in our bio.

#afripolsky

💻 Pleased to circulate the new blog detailing the African Collections Future project, run by our very own Cantab, Dr. Eva Namusoke.

🌍 Eva seeks to develop a better sense of where Africa-related objects and materials are across the University of Cambridge.

www.ccc.cam.ac.uk/blog/introdu...

Digital Re-Curation & Creative Research with African Archives: Parallel to the rise of the digital has been an explosion of interest in ‘the archive’ by creative practitioners. In recent years artists, writers and curators have explored and critiqued archives with increasing urgency through multiple forms of intervention and re-presentation of historical collections. Nowhere has this trend in artistic practice been more lively or more vital than where it addresses colonial archival legacies through creative activism: voicing silences, challenging colonial narratives and restituting lost inheritances. This conversation, chaired by Lydia Waithira Muthuma, brings together artist-curator Sana Ginwalla, founder of Zambia Belonging, Chao Maina, historian, digital heritage specialist and founding member of the Museum of British Colonialism with Sally Kent, Curator of the Royal Commonwealth Society collections at Cambridge University.

This FREE and ONLINE series of five seminars returns to the theme of a SCOLMA publication from 2014, ‘African Studies in the Digital Age’. Through a programme of discussion events we will be exploring some key ways in which this field has changed over that decade. The season will address a variety of topics including digital repatriation projects, new modes of sharing, researching and teaching with digital collections, collecting born digital records, and the creative re-use and curation of digital heritage. Each event in the season is intended to be structured as a conversation or round table, and the season will include collection holders, researchers, digital experts and artists from the UK, the African continent and beyond. The focus, given our key audience, will in large part be on the practicalities and challenges of doing this kind of work. Our aim is to share knowledge, stimulate discussion on best practice, and identify key opportunities in the field.

📅 January 31, 1-2pm GMT - online

Digital Re-Curation & Creative Research with African Archives: SCOLMA Seminar Series #1

Registration is open for the 1st of 5 FREE seminars in our 2024 series "African Studies in the Digital Age"

Register and find more info at the link in our bio!

"Alternative Ways of Knowing (in) Africa"

Consider Africa’s ‘lived realities’ and the new ways of knowing that these realities engender.

Sound like your research? Submit your abstract!

We'll be drip-feeding the ASAUK streams over the next month to hype you up!

#asauk2024 #afripolsky

ASAUK 2024 is happening August 29-31 at Oxford Brookes University.

There are 30+ topics within the theme "Generation and Regeneration" that you can submit an abstract for - deadline is April 20th!

Click the link to find out more.
#afrpolsky

For those outside Cambridge interested in this module, contact: info@amdigital.co.uk 📧

Missionary Studies : Trial access We are pleased to announce a new trial for Missionary Studies from Adam Matthew Digital. This trial runs until 16 February 2024. Please note the terms and conditions that apply during this trial here ...

⛪️ Calling all studying missions!

- African Missions of the United Presbyterian Church, National Library of Scotland

- The SUM in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Sudan, & other Territories

- Papers of Bishop Ridsdale (1916-2000), Missionary to the Eastern Congo, from the Cambridge CCW

#afripolsky

Jenni Skinner (right) is the Library Manager. Recently celebrating 8 years in the Library, she is the resident expert in everything African Studies within our own collection and within various collections scattered around the Cambridge University campus. She’s been splitting her time between managing the Library and organising the largely uncatalogued archive in our basement. Jenni has 2 pet goats! Ben Carson (left) is the new Senior Library Assistant. He’s your main point of contact should you have any questions about the collection, or are in need of specific materials or guidance. Ben would love to practice his Swahili with you when you come in!

The Cambridge University African Studies Library is open for 2024!

Get in touch with us for any enquiries or come say hello - Ben and Jenni will be happy to help you find what you need.

Wishing everybody a happy new year!