On 13^th May 2015 in Michał Bobrzyński’s Chamber in the Collegium Maius – the oldest building of the Jagiellonian University, an academic conference took place organised on the occasion of the 120^th anniversary of Professor Roman Stopa’s birth: The Pioneers of Cracow African Studies: Roman Stopa – a portrait of an exceptional Africanist on the 120th anniversary of his birth. The event served as an occasion to officially inaugurate the activities of the Jagiellonian Research Center for African Studies. From the very beginning, one of the main objectives behind the formation of the Jagiellonian Research Center for African Studies was a desire to bring back the memory of the traditions of the Cracow school of African studies and the integration of Cracovian Africanists. The year 2015, the 120^th anniversary of the birth and the 20th anniversary of the death of an exceptional Polish Africanist, a professor at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Roman Stopa, seemed the ideal occasion for such an event.

Roman Stopa (1895-1995), a linguistic and an Africanist, a specialist in click languages, lectured for many years at the Jagiellonian University in the present-day Institute of Oriental Studies (African languages, including Swahili, Hausa, Ewe, Bushmen and Hottentot languages, and the comparative musicology of Africa). In the mid-1930s, for almost a year Professor Stopa conducted linguistic research in South-Western Africa. During his long university career, he came to be known as the author of numerous academic and popular science texts, including Studies in African languages: (essays on phonetics, semiotics and meaning); The evolution of click sounds in some African languages; Powstanie mowy ludzkiej w oświetleniu antropologii i językoznawstwa [The forming of human speech illuminated through anthropology and linguistic studies); Teksty hotentockie (Hai-/omn i nama) = Hai/omn- und Namtexte [Hottentot texts]; or Mali ludzie z pustyni i puszczy (The small peoples from the desert and the jungle). It was the organisers’ objective that the conference be an occasion to not only discuss Professor Stopa’s academic achievements, but also to function as a voice in the discussion into the present state and future of Polish African studies. The official opening of the conference was done by the Jagiellonian University Vice-Rector for Didactics, Prof. Andrzej Mania; the Head of the Jagiellonian Research Center for African Studies and simultaneously the Director of the Jagiellonian University Institute of Political Science and International Relations, Prof. Robert Kłosowicz; and the Director of the Jagiellonian University Institute of Oriental Studies, Prof. Barbara Michalak-Pikulska. The first part of the conference was dedicated in its entirety to remembering Professor Roman Stopa, both in his scientific dimension and on a more private level. In the second part, the speakers focused on an analysis of Prof. Stopa’s linguistic and ethnographic academic achievements and discussed the Warsaw and Cracow schools of African studies. The last panel was dedicated to discussing the contemporary problems of Africa: the issue of African emigration to Europe, the democratisation of African states and the evolution of their political systems.