Provisional programme
The venue for the conference is the University of Hull’s Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE), located in Oriel Chambers, High Street, Hull. WISE is located next to Wilberforce House in the City of Hull’s Museums Quarter. Except for the conference dinner on Friday, all sessions take place at WISE.
Friday 26 September 2008
Registration opens 8.30am
Refreshments available
WISE reception
10am Keynote
Questions and discussion
Suzanne Schwarz (Liverpool Hope)
11am Refreshment break
Boardroom, WISE
11.20am Panel session 1 - Slaving and Trade Networks
Lecture Room, WISE
Carlos F. Liberato (Sergipe, Brazil): Sierra Leone and the rivers of Guine in the eighteenth century
Denise Jones (Liverpool Hope): The British slave trade in Sierra Leone: a case study of Robert Bostock, 1769-92
Sean Kelley (Hartwick College, New York): Panyarring and palaver: violence and the slave trade at Sierra Leone and the Windward Coast in the eighteenth century
Kenneth Morgan (Brunel): British merchants and the slave trade from Sierra Leone, 1750-1807
Karlee-Anne Sapoznik (York): Revisiting the Sierra Leone scheme through the lens of Gustavus Vasa or Olaudah Equiano
1pm Lunch
Streetlife Museum, Museum Quarter
2pm Panel session 2 - Sierra Leone and African Diasporas
Lecture Room, WISE
Celine Flory (Paris), From Sierra Leone to French Guiana and Martinique: Sierra Leone travellers in the mid-nineteenth century
Paul Lovejoy and David Trotman (York): Liberated slaves in Trinidad and Sierra Leone: some comparative data
Philip Misevich (Emory): Freetown and the escape of slaves from the Sierra Leone hinterland
Carolyn Brown (Rutgers): Sierra Leone and returnees to Igboland
3.40pm Refreshment break
Boardroom, WISE
4pm Panel session 3 – Building a new society: Sierra Leone in the 19th Century Lecture Room, WISE
Tunde Zack-Williams (Central Lancashire): The legacy of the slave trade in Sierra Leone
Gibril R. Cole (Louisiana State): Edward Wilmot Blyden and the education of Muslim Krio on colonial Sierra Leone
David Skinner (Santa Clara and Edinburgh): From company to colony to nation state: the Islamic factor in the development of Sierra Leone
Andrew Walls (Liverpool Hope): ‘The Morning Star of Africa’: Sierra Leone in Evangelical and Humanitarian Discourse
5.40pm Free time
7.30pm for 8pm Conference Dinner
Lindsey Suite, Staff House, University of Hull campus, Cottingham Road, Hull,. Joseph Opala (James Madison, Virginia) will introduce a video on Bunce Island, Sierra Leone.
Saturday 27 September 2008
9am Refreshments available
Boardroom, WISE
9.30am Keynote
Questions and discussion
Milli Akinsulure
10.30am Refreshment break
Boardroom, WISE
10.50am Panel session 4 – Politics and social Inclusion in Sierra Leone in 19th and 20th century Sierra Leone
Lecture Room, WISE
Trina Hogg (New York): The ‘Human Leopard Society’: pacification, policing and prosecution on the Sherbro Coast 1880-1915
Silke Strickrodt (Humboldt, Berlin): ‘Lights shining in a dark place’: female education and African initiative in nineteenth-century Sierra Leone
Christine Whyte (LSE), From servile marriage to slave revolt: the exploitation of women in Sierra Leone
Chalen Westaby (Liverpool Hope), Imperial lethargy: self-determination and the de-colonisation of Sierra Leone 1954-1961
12.30pm Lunch
Streetlife Museum
1.30pm Panel session 5 - Rebuilding Society
Lecture Room, WISE
Richard Fanthorpe (Sussex): Indirect rule in the 21st century? The Biriwa chieftancy election crisis of 2006
Ibrahim Seaga Shaw (West of England): The politics of humanitarian intervention: a critical analogy of Britain’s response to the end of the slave trade and the civil war in Sierra Leone
Mélanie Torrent (Paris Diderot): The Commonwealth contribution to rebuilding civil society in Sierra Leone: achievements and challenges
Fredline M’Cormack (Florida): Can foreign aid promote democracy? The role of NGOs in civil-society building in post-conflict Sierra Leone
3.10pm Refreshment break
Boardroom, WISE
3.30pm Panel session 6 - Culture and Identity
Lecture Room, WISE
Prince Kwame Adika (Illinois State): Voodoo child in search of umbilical cord: the trans-national healing aesthetics of Syl Cheney-Coker
Jacqueline Knörr (Max Planck Institute): ‘Out of hiding’: reconstruction of Krio identity in post-war Sierra Leone
Theodore Rose (Chicago): African civil development and British colonial expansion in Sierra Leone: a cultural enquiry
4.50pm Close of day
Delegates are free to make their own dining arrangements. A list of local restaurants and eateries will be available.
Sunday 28 September 2008
9.00am Refreshments available
Boardroom, WISE
9.30am Panel 7: Imagining Connections: Freetown - then and now
Lecture Room, WISE
James Sidbury (Texas, Austen), ‘African’ settlers in the founding of Freetown
Emma Christopher (Sydney) and Maree Defolski (Macquarie): Sydney and Freetown: reclaiming a vanished twin
Lydia Saul (Wilberforce House): Hull’s relationship with Sierra Leone as seen through the Wilberforce House collections
11.10am Refreshment break
Boardroom, WISE
11.30am Panel session 8: Roundtable on Archaeology, Archives, Memory and Tourism
Lecture Room, WISE
Joseph Opala (James Madison, Virginia), convenor
Paul Basu (Sussex), David Gundry (World Monuments Fund), Sir Roland Jackson (Bunce Island Coalition (UK) and British Association for the Advancement of Science), and Ibrahim Abdullah (Sierra Leone Archives) will lead a discussion on Bunce Island, archival and other heritage issues in Sierra Leone today.
1.10pm Concluding remarks: Paul Lovejoy (York), David Richardson (WISE), and Suzanne Schwarz (Liverpool Hope)
1.30pm Lunch
Streetlife Museum
2.30pm Close of Conference and departure