The panel proposal "Digital Humanities ( #DH ) and
#AI in African Studies: Opportunities, Challenges, and Decolonial Perspectives" that I submitted with Vincent Hiribarren has been accepted for the #ECAS2025. The conference will take place in Prague next year.

https://frederickmadore.com/conference/digital-humanities-dh-and-ai-in-african-studies-opportunities-challenges-and-decolonial-perspectives/

I'm delighted to announce that my forthcoming book, "Religious Activism on Campuses in Togo and Benin: Christian and Muslim Students Navigating Authoritarianism and Laïcité, 1970-2023" is now listed on the De Gruyter website. It is currently scheduled for publication in March 2025, but we aim to have it published and made available in open access by the end of the year.

This book, based on my research with the Remoboko project at ZMO since 2021, examines Christian and Muslim student associations at the Universities of Lomé and Abomey-Calavi. It explores their resilience over five decades, navigating authoritarianism, political change and laïcité while shaping campus life and offering a "social curriculum". The study offers new insights into the role of faith in public universities and social change in West Africa.

I'm grateful to many people, especially Abdoulaye Sounaye, the project's PI, my colleagues at ZMO, and all the interviewees in Benin and Togo.
https://www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9783111429182/html

On 9 November 2023, the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (#ZMO) will officially launch the "Islam #WestAfrica Collection" (https://islam.zmo.de/s/westafrica/) in Berlin. This project, which I’m directing, is a collaborative, #openaccess digital #database that currently contains over 5,000 archival documents, newspaper articles, Islamic publications of various kinds, audio and video recordings, photographs, and references on #Islam and #Muslims in #BurkinaFaso, #Benin, #Niger, #Nigeria, #Togo and #Cotedivoire.

Far from being the end of a project, this is just the beginning, as the database will continue to grow and will lay the groundwork for future collaborations with other scholars and institutes as more countries may be added.

Mauro Nobili (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA), Issouf Binaté (Université Alassane Ouattara, Côte d'Ivoire) and Kai Kresse (ZMO) will comment on the project.

https://www.zmo.de/en/events/launch-islam-west-africa-collection

#omeka #DH

Thanks to a generous funding from the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, our #Remoboko research group is organising its final #conference entitled "#University Campuses in #Africa and Beyond: Training Grounds, Moral Spaces and Political Arenas" at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (#ZMO) in #Berlin next week.

This conference seeks to examine how university campuses in Africa and beyond:
1) offer training for various skills and know-how which translate into key assets for the social becoming of students beyond the #campus;
2) become a site of moral activism where competing claims of social good and citizenry lead to projects of self-transformation (individual, collective) and/or even conflicts of norms;
3) feed on various forms of engagements (intellectual, religious, political) while developing their own politics (regional, religious, ethnic, ideological, etc.).

The event will feature 22 papers across 8 panels, a book launch, a photo exhibition and the screening of an ethnographic film.

I'm honored to have received one of the two "2023 Emerging Open Scholarship Award" by the Canadian Social Knowledge Institute (C-SKI) and its partners for my work on the "Islam #BurkinaFaso Collection"! I would especially like to thank Perry Collins, the LibraryPress@UF, the Sahel Research Group and my current institution, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), for their invaluable support.

I'm already working on the next phase of the project with the creation of a larger collaborative digital database on #Islam in #WestAfrica, which will include material on #CotedIvoire, #Benin and #Togo.

https://etcl.uvic.ca/2023/01/17/2023-open-scholarship-awards/

#openscience #dh #digitalhistory #omeka