Cadbury Fellowships 2020
This year’s Cadbury programme and conference is concerned with processes of interpretation in African societies and African studies: 'Making Sense: Language, Text and Interpretation in African Studies'
How do the authors of what we call ‘sources’ convey meaning in their written and oral texts? How do these meanings develop in historically specific semantic worlds? How is meaning transformed through translations, reinterpretations and struggles over meaning? How is the world made sense of in African languages and epistemic traditions, and what changes when analysts - African and non-African - make sense of African texts and societies in different discursive contexts? We wish to discuss what makes the understanding of African societies possible; what is at stake when different types of exegetes interpret the past or the present of Africa.
From authors such as Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur we take the idea that understanding is always interpretive and perspectival. Understanding is shaped by one’s position in the world and is a product of language, history and subjective perspective. As Mamadou Diawara and Abderrahmane Ngaidé have shown, this implies a reflexion on the position of interpreters, historians or anthropologists, ‘outsiders’ or ‘insiders’ in relation to the circumstances they study and their being in the world as ‘searchers of Meaning.’
Karin Barber and Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias have pioneered research approaches that subject to close critical scrutiny the intellectual, political and artistic projects of producers of knowledge; the social settings of knowledge-production and consumption; the formal rules governing different types of written or oral works or performances; and the situation of the researcher/interpreter. This holistic approach to interpretation that necessitates a constant ‘back-and-forth’ analytical movement between past and present, between observer and observed, between so-called ‘primary sources’ and ‘secondary literature’, urges researchers to take into account all the layers of interpretation accumulated in the process of producing and analysing oral and written texts. It is this process of knowledge production, focused on Africa, that we propose to discuss at the present conference. A concern with these issues entails reflections on at least three dimensions of research: empirical, methodological, and theoretical.
From an empirical perspective, we are interested in the conditions of evidence collection and negotiation of research agendas in sites as different as urban or rural contexts, colonial archives or the private libraries of Islamic scholars, repositories of newspaper or radio recordings, war-zones or NGO headquarters. How do the agendas of researchers and other research participants intersect and interact? How does research happen, concretely, at the interface between the questions of the researchers and the priorities of the subjects of research, collaborators, interpreters, gate-keepers, and mediators?
Methodologically, a focus on hermeneutics presupposes the development of methods for the exegesis of different types of evidence, ranging from a semantic approach to oral or written texts in vernacular languages, to a phenomenological engagement with the embodiment of particular forms of evidence – from the actual bodies and voices of informants, griots, or performers; to the material means through which text or other data are written, recorded and circulated: how do researchers interpret a variety of sources? What obstacles do they face, which new methodologies can be adopted to improve our understanding of African history and society (such as, for example, new methods in digital humanities)?
Theoretically, a hermeneutical approach poses questions such as the possibility of cultural translation; inequality and reciprocity in knowledge production; and the relationship between researchers and authors of research evidence (‘sources’). Both the original author of a source and the academic analysing the source (at a later stage) engage in similar processes of reflection, selection and editing albeit for different purposes. They are both exegetes, inevitably engaged in constant decision-making, not only about what to do next, but also about which words and representations to choose. They are both engaged not only in pragmatic strategies and negotiations, but also in semiotic ones.
The Cadbury programme (and conference) invites contributions that engage this order of questions in relation to concrete processes and projects of research. It is open to researchers coming from various disciplines and multi- and inter-disciplinary backgrounds and all types of sources on all African regions and historical periods. We particularly encourage applications from researchers who work on a specific source or corpus of sources in an African language (including Arabic and other languages used in Africa) and who intend to carry out a critical semantic analysis of the meanings, interpretations and uses of this material. Fellowship applications will be selected on the basis of their interest and originality with regards to questions of interpretation: how can the meanings of what we call our sources be accessed? What problems arise in the process of interpreting? How is the researcher positioned in relation to the authors of his/her sources, and the users and audiences of the knowledge s/he analyses and/or produces? And how do researchers represent the phenomena they study – are their interpretations new representations? How are they related to the original meanings conveyed by the producers of their sources?
Eligibility for a Cadbury Fellowship
We are looking for early-career scholars whose research would benefit from a residential fellowship of up to four weeks at the University of Birmingham. Applicants must be based in an African institution. They should be in the early stages of their academic careers (that is, they should have completed a PhD within the last four years, or now be close to completing one) and they must demonstrate that their research is relevant to the theme outlined above.
Benefits of a Cadbury Fellowship
The Cadbury fellows will have time to use the University’s excellent library resources, discuss their work with academic staff and postgraduate students at DASA, and contribute to the intellectual life of the department by participating in the numerous events that will be organised here during the period of the fellowships.
Timing of the Cadbury Fellowships for 2020
The fellowship programme will begin on or after 27 April 2020. It will finish between 24 May and 6 June 2020. The three-day international conference is scheduled for 21, 22 and 23 May 2020.
Costs to be covered by the Cadbury Fellowships
Fellowships will cover return air-fare, accommodation and living costs for a period of four weeks.
For more information click "LINK TO ORIGINAL" below.
This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/historycultures/departments/dasa/news/2020/cfp-cadbury-fellowships.aspx?fbclid=IwAR3uPaY19xCY2l3yNyjcuTl4BqDQoahPeOvFUplUsdpmicGrM69le5IymYw