African migrants crossing the dangerous Darien gap, a Kenyan delegation learning about Colombian coffee production, exchange between Latin American and African artists, Colombian government's #EstrategiaAfrica: Knowledge production engaging these two continents is increasingly relevant to capture and re/centre configurations in African Studies. Mobility, imaginations, and exchange of knowledges contribute to re/focus the material and intangible epistemological foundations across two continents. Contributions range from conceptualizations, such as “Nuestra América” (Mara Viveros Vigoya), “Améfrica ladina” (Leila Gonzalez), theoretical and political dialogues regarding “decoloniality” (Sabelo Ndlovo-Gatsheni, Anibal Quijano), to ethnographies of circulation and return, for example, of Afro-Brazilian formerly enslaved communities to West Africa (Joanna Boampong). How can African Studies contribute in exploring the manifold shifts in focus and interest that take place beyond the continent? Which forms and contents of knowledge emerge, and how do they engage with the past and imagine the future?
This panel invites ethnographically grounded and conceptually sensitive contributions from all areas of exchange across the two continents that explicitly engage with emerging perspectives from the Southern dialogue itself. The objective is threefold: (1) Re-centring the Africa-Latin America bridge as a way to contribute to decolonizing academic practice in general. (2) Convening scholars and practitioners from all sides of the Atlantic to reconfigure Area Studies focused on Africa or Latin America only and intervene in formalised knowledge archives so far disproportionately held in the global north. (3) Increasing the knowledge circulation and collaboration among actors between the two continents and their reception in the global north.