Workshop: Concepts of Africa and African Religions in Interconnected Worlds

In this year’s work­shop of the Work­ing Group Africa (DVRW), we would like to exam­ine ques­tions regard­ing con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tions of Africa and inter­con­nect­ed­ness, with a par­tic­u­lar focus on reli­gion. Cur­rent approach­es such as glob­al entan­gle­ments, relat­ed­ness and rela­tion­ships, or translo­cal­i­ties can be dis­cussed in greater depth. We want to exam­ine how cur­rent debates on bound­ary work and iden­ti­ty are being shaped, both in schol­ar­ly and polit­i­cal are­nas: Where and how are the bound­aries of ‘Africa’ nego­ti­at­ed and for what pur­pose? Which inter­con­nec­tions deter­mine the dif­fer­ences between ‘African reli­gion’ and ‘reli­gion in Africa/the dias­po­ra’, and for whom? What cri­te­ria are used to define ‘African­ness’, ‘African’ life worlds, com­mu­ni­ties, and soci­eties? How does the pale­oan­thro­po­log­i­cal trope that “East Africa is the home­land of us all”ii influ­ence research on pre-his­­tor­i­­cal African civil­i­sa­tions and his­tor­i­cal iden­ti­ty? And how do glob­al fund­ing and pub­li­ca­tion infra­struc­tures con­tribute to these dis­cours­es? Mov­ing for­ward from ear­li­er debates on ‘African’ ver­sus ‘Euro­pean’ per­spec­tives in the study of reli­gion (see Ludwig/Adogame 2004; Adogame et al. 2012), how are African-Amer­i­­can schol­ar­ly dis­cours­es, in all Amer­i­c­as, brought into play when defin­ing the bound­ary of ‘Africa’? Which regions and per­spec­tives are omit­ted from cur­rent stud­ies on ‘African(a) reli­gion’ and require more atten­tion (e.g., Indi­an Ocean dias­po­ras, gen­er­a­tional mod­els of migra­tion in the 20th and 21st cen­turies, etc.)? The work­shop aims to fos­ter crit­i­cal dis­cus­sions on these and fur­ther ques­tions with­in inter­con­nect­ed worlds.

Work­shop_AK-Afri­­ka_Er­lan­­gen2026