Join us ONLINE for the FINAL seminar in "African Studies in the Digital Age" - SCOLMA's 2024 Seminar Series: Online engagement, African archives & digital public history

About the Seminar: Online engagement, African archives & digital public history

The exponential development of digital tools and platforms from Whatsapp to Digital Humanities have radically shifted opportunities for public history – new opportunities for collective sense-making and narrating the past. This final round table in the SCOLMA seminar season addresses the work involved in engaging discussion around African collections through these platforms, re-mixing and connecting collections, short-circuiting colonial logics.

In very diverse ways our three panellists have developed projects that have brought together transnational audiences and African collections: Érika Melek Delgado (King’s College, London) co-director of the Freedom Narratives Database, JC Niala (History of Science Museum, Oxford) who has led UK discussion on transforming community access to African collections, and Dr. Anne Samson (independent historian) founder of the online Great War in Africa Association. We’ll hear from them about the successes and difficulties of virtual collaboration, in creating and sustaining online audiences and projects, and what they have learned through their processes about the needs and interests of online audiences for UK African collections.

Scroll down to read a full bio of each speaker.

About the SCOLMA 2024 Seminar Series

This FREE and ONLINE series of 5 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.

Seminars are on Wednesdays from 13:00-14:00 GMT:

1. January 31st (passed)
2. February 14th (passed)
3. February 28th (passed)
4. March 13th (passed)
5. April 24th (The FINALE) - the final seminar will happen on BST time.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the SCOLMA committee had to change the final seminar date from April 17th to April 24th. We look forward to having you join us on Wednesday April 24th at 13:00 BST, and apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Support & Join SCOLMA

UK Library & Archives Group on Africa (SCOLMA) is a registered charity (No. 325086). As a non-profit organisation, we would love your help in continuing our mission to provide the best possible service for academics, students and other researchers working in African studies. A small donation would support our wonderful work. We publish a journal, Africa Bibliography, Research and Documentation, run a directory of African studies libraries, organise conferences and seminars, and network with other librarians, archivists and researchers, in the UK, Europe, Africa and the US. We also act as an expert body providing specialist advice.

If you've enjoyed our past seminars, conferences, or simply would like to support SCOLMA, please consider donating any amount you can when you get your free ticket to this seminar!

You are also warmly invited to become a member of SCOLMA. Please visit our membership page for further details and to learn how to register.

Speakers' Biographies