Stream convenor: Rebekah Lee (University of Oxford)
Chair and Editor of Journal of Southern African Studies
Stream Rationale: The Journal of Southern African Studies (JSAS) publishes work from
established and emerging scholars and encourages inter-disciplinary analysis, strong
comparative perspectives and original research that reflects new theoretical or methodological approaches. An active international editorial board with strong Southern African representation demonstrates our close ties with scholars and our commitment to promoting research in the region. JSAS has been a strong supporter of, and presence within, ASAUK conferences in recent years. We are very pleased to be able to continue our association with ASAUK and to promote engaged scholarship on and from Africa.
Panel Title: Networked misogyny and the manosphere in Africa
Panel Convenor: George Karekwaivanane (University of Edinburgh; g.karekwaivanane@ed.ac.uk )
Abstract: Studies of masculinity in Africa have done a good job of tracing the historical development of ideas about manhood and exploring the diversity of masculinities across time and space. Important scholarship has also addressed the so-called ‘crisis of masculinity’ and its links to issues such as gender-based violence. However, there has been comparatively little attention to how digital media have contributed to the incubation and circulation of toxic masculinities, and how they provide spaces for like-minded individuals to congregate. The transnational nature of digital platforms has further enabled figures such as Andrew Tate to achieve global reach and gain followers and indeed copy-cats on the African continent. This panel will examine the various manifestations of the ‘manosphere’ in African contexts, the factors shaping its emergence and growth, and the key local and global actors driving these developments. It will also consider how these digital trends relate to historical patterns in the development of gender relations and patriarchy in Africa, as well as the contemporary social and political consequences of this networked misogyny. We invite paper presentations that engage with these and related questions.
Panel Title: History, fiction, and narrative form in Southern African politics Panel Convenor: Jocelyn Alexander (University of Oxford; jocelyn.alexander@qeh.ox.ac.uk )
Abstract: This panel explores the relationships between fiction and historical writing as narrative forms shaped by and engaged with political transformation. It brings together historians, literary scholars, and writers concerned with representation, imagination, power and the making of the past in the present. It has a particular focus on narratives
produced in or about moments of revolutionary struggle and on efforts to instantiate and mark breaks with the past through the consideration of individual and collective lives. It crosses Lusophone and Anglophone boundaries in an effort to create a comparative conversation.
Panel Title: The 2026 Election in Zambia: An inflection point? Panel Convenors: Marja Hinfelaar (SAIPAR; marja.hinfelaar@saipar.org ) and Nicole Beardsworth (University of the Witwatersrand; nicole.beardsworth@wits.ac.za )
Abstract: To be held on 13 August 2026, the Zambian election is a moment to consider the changing landscape of Zambian politics since the country’s third turnover of power in 2021. The period since 2021 has been a study in contradictions, characterised by increased fiscal responsibility, economic predictability, growth in copper revenues and some political liberalisation such as the reduced influence of party ‘cadres’, diminished political violence and repeal of laws around the ‘defamation of the president.’ But it has also seen numerous incidents of harassment or arrest of opposition leaders or activists, the cost of a basic needs basket has doubled and an electricity crisis and high inflation which left the United Party for National Development (UPND) party worried about retaining government in the 2026 polls. In this panel, we invite proposals that relate to some of these different trends and may include studies of the changing political economy of the government, shifting patterns of economic accumulation, party political dynamics, coalition formation and decline, the gendered nature of elections and any other 2026 election-related topics. This panel considers whether the election might represent an inflection point – a moment of significant change – in the country’s political economy, and seeks proposals from scholars considering various aspects of Zambian politics.
Panel Title: How on earth do we get out of here?! South Africa in poly-crisis
Panel Convenors: David Everatt (University of the Witwatersrand; David.everatt@wits.ac.za) and Rekgotsofetse Chikane (University of the Witwatersrand)
Abstract: A multi-generational panel asks how South Africa reached its current situation, locked in a poly-crisis; and more importantly, what needs to be done to set the country on a sustainable, democratic path into the future. While South Africa has undergone a remarkable transformation since the end of apartheid, two questions remain front and centre in the evaluation of South Africa since 1994. The first of these is ‘How did we get “here”?’. The notion of here, understood in spatial, temporal, ontological, and epistemological terms, remains contested and contingent upon one’s position within South Africa’s the social and historical order. For some, here signifies the culmination of a long and unfinished liberation project; for others, it represents a deferred promise, marked by the persistence of inequality, exclusion, and unfulfilled potential. The trajectory from apartheid to freedom, through reconciliation, reconstruction, and disillusionment, is thus interpreted through multiple and often
conflicting narratives of progress and regression. Here is beset by crisis, perhaps the most over-used word in the South African lexicon, but unavoidable as common existential threats such as climate change and the rise of neo-fascism compound the major domestic challenges facing the country. The second question, which is intimately connected to the first, asks ‘What must be done?’ – or, how do we get out of here? This question exposes a deep tension within contemporary South African thought and practice: between those who advocate for reform within existing institutional frameworks and those who call for radical rupture and systemic renewal. The reformist perspective often emphasises stability, gradual transformation, and the preservation of constitutional norms. The radical perspective, by contrast, views the current order as irredeemably compromised and demands a fundamental reconstitution of the political and economic system. Although these positions appear antithetical, they frequently converge in their diagnosis of the country’s malaise while diverging on the scope, pace, and locus of change.
Responding to these two questions – ‘how did we get ˆhere?’ and ‘how do we get out of here?!’ – will be informed by multiple factors, including positionality, ideology, discipline and the like. More immediate attributes such as race, sex or age (and length of time researching and writing about South Africa) may also generate competing if not compelling answers to the pair of questions. That is the aim of the proposed panel – to generate nuanced debate, triggered by the panellists, and help us understand how to move forward through the current crisis-induced stasis.
Panel Title: Forensic Narratives: Inquests, Accountability and Interrogating the Dead in Southern Africa
Panel Conveners: Gabrielle Robbins (University of Oxford), Rebekah Lee (University of Oxford)
Abstract:
The recent re-opening of the inquest into the death of anti-apartheid activist and Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko has brought to the fore the political stakes, and painful legacies, of forensic investigation in South Africa. Nonetheless, a focus solely on forensic science in relation to transitional and remedial justice has tended to obscure the continued relevance in southern Africa of a more complex, contested, and historically and culturally embedded, set of practices at work to ‘interrogate’ the untimely dead. These may include ritual post-mortems, spiritual inquests, ‘family forensics’, exhumations and re-interments. We invite papers that address the processes and consequences of the interrogation of the deceased body – absent or present – in southern Africa. We are interested in exploring how narratives of the untimely dead are constructed, represented and circulated within and across various publics and communities, and how these post-mortem practices (broadly conceived) are shaped by the potentialities and limits of knowability and accountability. This panel seeks to contribute to emergent ‘death studies’ scholarship that explores the changing meaning and management of death in southern Africa whilst also critically situating forensic studies in shaping the understanding of unnatural death in post-conflict societies.
