News

Dr. Giuliano Martiniello presented a paper at the international conference on “Global Land Grabbing”, Cornell University, Ithaca, 17-19 November 2012, organized by the Land Deals Politics Initiative network (LDPI). The paper, titled: “The Accumulation of Dispossession and Resistance in Northern Uganda” explored the complex relation between current processes of land dispossession and popular/community peasant resistance.

She attended and presented a paper at the "CONCEPTAFRICA" workshop in Johannesburg, 24-27 November, 2012. Her paper was titled Masculinity and Stoicism: Medical Circumcision and the makin, g of "Womanly" Men in Bugisu, 1930s to 1960s.

The workshop brought together scholars from different Africa-related backgrounds. Some of the key scholars included V. Mudimbe and Bo Strath. The conference was part of the Conceptafrica project which aims at promoting conceptual history in Africa.

Europeans who came to the New World were preoccupied with the ways in which the it was not like Europe.

Prof. Mahmood Mamdani will deliver this year’s Edward W. Said ‘57 Memorial Lecture. His lecture is entitled “Settler Colonialism: Then and Now” and will take place on December 6th at 5PM in McCosh 10 at Princeton University from 5: 00 PM to 7: 00 PM. This event is sponsored by the Edward W. Said '57 Memorial Lecture Fund, the Princeton Committee on Palestine, the Department of English, and the Program in African Studies.

Prof. Mamdani is to be honored as "Scholar of the Year" at the second Annual African Diaspora Awards in recognition of his accomplishments and immense contribution to African Scholarship. The event will take place at the School of Visual Arts 333 West 23rd Street, New York, NY 10011, on December 8th 2012.

Stella Nyanzi is presenting a paper entitled “Homosexuality, Prostitution and HIV/AIDS in Displacement and Post-Conflict Settings: The Case of Refugees and Displaced People in Uganda” at the Policy and Research Group Seminar on ‘HIV/AIDS and Post-Conflict Societies in Africa’ of the Centre for Conflict Resolution.

The third semester of the MISR PhD programme commenced on January 7th, 2013 and will end on April 26th 2013.

The 2013 academic year has two semesters:

Semester 1: January 7th - April 26th.

• Teaching: January 7 - April 19
• Exams: April 22 - April 26

Semester 2: May 13 - August 30.

Campaigning is underway in Angola ahead of parliamentary elections at the end of the month. It will be only the third vote since independence from Portugal in 1975, which was followed by decades of civil war. Although the war ended in 2002, deep social divisions remain. Antonio Tomas, an Angolan academic, discusses the causes. Click here for the interview.

Let Us Consolidate Makerere’s Core Mission: the Pursuit of Scholarship

Mahmood Mamdani

Professor and Executive Director, MISR

(text of talk to the Makerere University Stakeholders Consultative Meeting 3^rd August 2012)

The Makerere of today is a product of two historical periods: its early establishment during the colonial period and its reform under neo-liberal influence.  I shall begin by asking whether colonialism and neoliberalism are living legacies or pasts that we have moved beyond.

Decolonization