The 5th Congress of Polish Africanists took place on 23rd-25th April, organized in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains by the Warsaw University Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology and the Polish Society of African Studies.ne.
The 5th Congress of Polish Africanists took place on 23rd-25th April, organized in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains by the Warsaw University Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology and the Polish Society of African Studies. The deliberations, in which 130 scientists participated (with close to one hundred presented papers), took place in Huta Szklana and in the Holy Cross Monastery of the Oblate Missionaries. The congress papers and debates were presented by representatives of various research disciplines: ethnology, cultural anthropology, history, political science, international relations, economics, cultural studies, linguistics, art history, with the common denominator being the same research area, i.e. the African continent. The conference would not have been complete without the participation of researchers connected to the Jagiellonian Research Center for African Studies, i.e. the Director of the Centre – Prof. Robert Kłosowicz, Prof. Anna Niedźwiedź, Ph.D, Prof. Joanna Bar of the Cracow Pedagogical University, Prof. Maciej Kurcz of the University of Silesia and Dr Joanna Mormul.
The Congress was accompanied by a number of artistic events: a concert of African music and some film screenings. On the second day of the conference, Buba Badjie Kuyateh, a Gambian composer and virtuoso of the kora (a West African instrument similar to a harp), performed in the Basilica Minor in the Holy Cross Monastery. In turn, the Świętokrzyskie edition of the 2018 AfryKamera Film Festival, which presents African cinematography, took place on the final third day of the Congress. Two films were screened, “Wallay” (France/Burkina Faso 2017) and “Felicité” (France/Belgium/Senegal/Germany/Lebanon/the DRC 2017) in the Museum for Intercultural Dialogue in Kielce.
The next 6th Congress of Polish Africanists will take place in Cracow and will be organized by the Jagiellonian Research Center for African Studies and the Jagiellonian University Institute of Political Science and International Relations.
