2025
Call for Proposals
Writing and mentoring programme on “Gender, Spirituality and Agency in Africa”
The African Association for the Study of Religions (AASR), in collaboration with the University of Nairobi and the University of Leeds, and with support of the British Academy, is convening an interdisciplinary writing and mentoring programme on the theme of “Gender, Spirituality and Agency in Africa”.
The programme is aimed at Africa-based early-career researchers from across the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, demonstrating AASR’s commitment to nurturing the next generation of scholars undertaking critical research at the intersections of religion, culture and society in Africa.
Through a series of online sessions and an in-person workshop in Nairobi (29-30 July 2025), participants will train and develop academic skills such as writing and reviewing, deepen their expertise on the subject, strengthen their academic networks, and be supported to prepare their work for publication in a high-quality international journal.
Participants are expected
- to participate in two online pre-workshop training sessions, focusing on “How to prepare and present a paper” and “How to review a paper”, as well as in an online discussion of key academic texts on the subject.
- to prepare and submit a draft paper of 6,000 words (based on original research) ahead of the workshop, and to provide feedback on the draft papers of other participants.
- To attend and participate in a two-day in-person workshop, where papers will be presented and discussed, with additional training sessions on general academic skills.
- To participate in a post-workshop mentoring scheme with the aim of preparing the paper for publication and offering general academic and career advice.
The aim is to publish the revised workshop papers as a special issue in a relevant academic journal.
Participation in the programme is free. Successful applicants will have the costs for travel to, and accommodation in Nairobi covered. Selected workshop participants may also be given the opportunity to attend and participate in the 2026 conference of the African Association for the Study of Religions in Botswana and present their work there.
Eligibility
The workshop aims at early-career academics based on the African continent.
- As a minimum, participants are required to have an MA and be registered for PhD studies.
- As a maximum, participants can have up to five years of postdoctoral experience.
- Participants should be undertaking work relevant to the theme of “gender, spirituality and agency in Africa”.
- Researchers currently affiliated with an African academic institution, and independent researchers based in an African country, are welcome to apply.
- Female academics and scholars from otherwise marginalized groups are especially encouraged to apply.
Organisers
The programme is made possible with funding from the British Academy, and is organised and facilitated by
- Dr Telesia Musila, University of Nairobi
- Dr Damaris Parsitau, AASR President; Nagel Institute, Calvin University
- Dr Abel Ugba, University of Leeds
- Dr Adriaan van Klinken, University of Leeds
About the theme: Gender, Spirituality and Agency in Africa
Gender, in relation to other categories such as age, disability, ethnicity, race and sexuality, is embedded in structures of power and thus connected to social, political and economic inequalities. These structures are informed and reinforced by religious and cultural ideologies, and are actively maintained and reproduced in religious institutions, among other social organisations. Gender, in African religious, cultural and social settings, is thus intricately connected to experiences of marginalisation and disempowerment, especially of women, sexual and gender minorities, but also of men who may struggle with the norms and expectations of masculinity.
Yet, religious belief, and spirituality as an everyday and embodied practice, may also serve as a critical, creative and resourceful site of subversion of, or resistance to, dominant gender norms; it may foster a sense of spiritual empowerment which can translate into social and political agency; it may inspire diverse forms of activism and community organization by marginalised individuals and groups; and it may enable the imagining of alternative possibilities and new forms of gendered and religious world-making.
For this programme, we invite proposals for papers that are based on original research, exploring and examining the complex and diverse intersections of gender, religion and spirituality, and socio-political agency. We welcome papers from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives, such as history, anthropology, literary and cultural studies, media studies, sociology, politics, development studies, gender and sexuality studies, religious studies and theology. Submissions should engage with relevant concepts and theories, particularly from African feminist, queer, and post/decolonial studies.
How to apply?
Please complete the form below and submit it to A.vanKlinken@leeds.ac.uk by 10 March 2025.
| Names | |
| Gender | |
| Highest academic qualification (degree, subject, year, institution) | |
| Current affiliation / career status | |
| Home address | |
| Email address | |
| Where would you travel from to Nairobi (if different from home address) | |
| Title of proposed workshop paper | |
| Abstract of paper (up to 150 words) | |
| Motivation statement for the programme (up to 150 words) | |
| Statement on your interest and expertise in the workshop theme, “Gender, Spirituality and Agency in Africa” (up to 150 words) |
2018
Announcing a Partnership with the Journal of Africana Religions!
A letter from our President, Elias K. Bongmba, outlining an exciting new initiative with the Journal of Africana Religions, followed by our joint press release. Read on!
Dear Colleagues of the AASR Community,
The executive of AASR has received, discussed, and approved an invitation from Professor Sylvester Johnson and Professor Edward Curtis, editors of the Journal of African Religions, for the African Association for the Study of Religions to collaborate closely with the Journal of Africana Religions. This is a new chapter for us, but also similar to the ties we have with the Journal of Religion in Africa.The journal also edits a book series in Africana Religions and recent authors who have published in the series include Oludamini Ogunnaike and Adriaan van Klinken. Please do take some time and look at the description of the series here.
We are delighted to tell you that as part of this collaboration, the editors of the journal have informed us that AASR members based in Africa will receive free subscriptions to the journal. Our members who live outside Africa will receive discounted subscription to the journal.
We invite all our members to be part of this expanded intellectual collaboration because it further fulfills one of our goals of strengthening our growing intellectual community in Africa and the African diaspora.
Sincerely,
Elias K. Bongmba
President, AASR
# # # # # FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE # # # # #
CONTACT:
Sara Fretheim, sara@sarafretheim.com
Edward Curtis, ecurtis4@iupui.edu
RELEASE DATE: November 29, 2018
AFRICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGIONS AND JOURNAL OF AFRICANA RELIGIONS ANNOUNCE GROUNDBREAKING PARTNERSHIP
Today the African Association for the Study of the Religions (AASR) and the Journal of Africana Religions announced a multifaceted partnership that will advance the global study of Africana religions.
“This is a new chapter for us,” said AASR President Elias Bongmba, who is the Harry and Hazel Chavanne Chair in Christian Theology at Rice University. “It significantly strengthens our growing intellectual community in Africa and the African diaspora.”
The new partnership’s most ambitious component is the creation of pan-Atlantic research teams that will unite scholars from Africa, the Americas, and Europe for collaborative research and writing. “In some cases,” according to Journal of Africana Religions co-founder and Virginia Tech Humanities Center Director Sylvester Johnson, “these will be mentoring relationships between senior and junior scholars. In other cases, the pairs will be composed of professors of equal rank. Whatever the case, the pairings must be mutually beneficial.”
“If these research pairings work the way we want them to,” added journal co-founder and IUPUI Millennium Chair of the Liberal Arts Edward Curtis, “some of them will lead to joint authorship of book manuscripts that we will want to consider for publication.” In addition to editing the journal, Johnson and Curtis are the editors of a Penn State University Press book series on Africana religions.
Under the new partnership agreement, AASR will become a Journal of Africana Religions sponsor, and AASR members working in Africa will receive complimentary e-subscriptions to the journal.
The Journal of Africana Religions will also play a role at the 9th AASR conference in Dakar, Senegal, in 2020.
Both groups plan on supporting one another’s social media and communications strategies, too.
Founded in 1992 in Harare, Zimbabwe, the AASR promotes the study of religions in Africa through international collaboration in research, publishing, and teaching. AASR is an affiliate organization of the International Association for the History of Religions. It provides a scholarly network for scholars across the African continent, Europe, and North America through its conferences in Africa, its bulletin, its own e-journal on African and African diasporic religions, and annual meetings at the American Academy of Religion and African Studies Association. It also supports the Journal of Religion in Africa.
The Journal of Africana Religions is a peer-reviewed journal that features research on the diverse religious heritage of African and African-descended people. Now in its seventh volume, the journal, which is published by Penn State University Press, is available from Project Muse and JSTOR as well as in print. It is also sponsored by the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD).
Both organizations emphasized that their new cooperation will complement rather than compete with existing partnerships and initiatives. The purpose is to increase resources devoted to the growth of the field in order to reflect its critical importance to the future of human knowledge-making.
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2018
Join Us! AASR Panels & Events @ AAR/SBL Denver 2018
Friends and Colleagues,
It’s almost that time again! As you make plans for the upcoming AAR conference November 17–20, please do plan on joining us for our sponsored/co-sponsored sessions, annual dinner, and business meeting. We look forward to seeing you there!
AASR Annual Dinner:
Sunday (18th), 6:30PM (restaurant closes by 10:00PM)
The Ethiopian Restaurant
2816 E. Colfax Ave, Denver, CO
Phone: 303-322-5939
NOTE: *CASH ONLY!*
AASR Business Meeting:
Monday (19th), 9:00AM–11:30AM, P19–100, Convention Center-Mile High 3B (Lower Level), following the session on Empire, Religion, Health, and Human Capital in Africa.
AASR Sponsored Sessions (AAR):
- P18-200
African Association for the Study of Religions
Theme: Power and Subversion African Religious Spaces
Elana Jefferson-Tatum, Tufts University, Presiding
Sunday (18th) – 1:00 PM–3:00 PM
Convention Center-Mile High 2C (Lower Level)
African Christianity and the Intersection Between Faith, Traditional And Biomedical Healing
Dying and Rising as the Moon Does”: The Keiskamma Art Project, the Persistence of the Xhosa People, and the Possibility of Impossibility
Individualism, Gender and Spirituality: The Nigerian Experience
Unregistered Participant
Unregistered Participant
African Christianity and the Intersection between Faith, Traditional, and Biomedical Healing
Susie Paulik-Babka, University of San Diego
“Dying and Rising as the Moon Does”: The Keiskamma Art Project, the Persistence of the Xhosa People, and the Possibility of Impossibility
Bolaji Bateye, Obafemi Awolowo University
Unregistered Participant
“The Church as Family, Things Are No Longer What They Used to Be”: Individualism, Genderization, and Scripturalization of Spirituality, the Nigerian Experience
- P19-100
African Association for the Study of Religions
Theme: Empire, Religion, Health, and Human Capital in Africa
Elias Kifon Bongmba, Rice University, Presiding
Monday (19th) – 9:00 AM–11:30 AM
Convention Center-Mile High 3B (Lower Level)
Empire, Religion, Health and Human Capital in Africa
Colonialism, Traditional African Religion, and the Catholic Church in Kenya
Humanizing Rituals in the American Presbyterian Congo Mission
Muhammad, Capitalist Ethics, and Muslim Reform in Burkina Faso
Timothy Carey, Boston College
“Who do the crowds say that I am?”: Colonialism, Traditional African Religion, and the Catholic Church in Kenya
Jesse Miller, Florida State University
Muhammad, Capitalist Ethics, and Muslim Reform in Burkina Faso
Unregistered Participant
Humanizing Rituals in the American Presbyterian Congo Mission
Business Meeting:
Elias Kifon Bongmba, Rice University
Corey Williams, Leiden University
AASR Co-Sponsored Sessions (SBL):
A19-411
Ecclesiological Investigations Unit and African Association for the Study of Religion
Theme: Ecclesial Experiences in African Contexts
Aaron Hollander, Loyola University Chicago, Presiding
Monday (19th) – 5:30 PM–7:00 PM
Hyatt Regency-Capitol 5 (Fourth Level)
The three papers of this session present ecclesial experiences in three distinct African contexts that have made or ought to make substantial contributions to the wider life of the Christian churches and to their understandings of the church. The first paper starts from twentieth-century liturgical reforms in the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Church, and analyzes the way in which local, national, and diasporic identity changed in relation to the transition between orality and textuality in these reforms. The second paper begins from the historic experience of the Christian descendants of slaves from the Kongo kingdom, and from that history makes a constructive theological argument for the importance of the “slave template” in undermining ecclesiologies of power and strength. The third paper, drawing on the work of Ghanaian Presbyterian Kwame Bediako and of Cameroonian Catholic Jean-Marc Éla, highlights the incorporation of ancestors in African theology and ecclesiology as a gift to be received by the wider communion of churches.
Andrew Salzmann, Benedictine College
Agency and Identity in Ethiopian Liturgical Reform
Elochukwu Eugene Uzukwu, Duquesne University
Liberation and the Slave-Template: Catholic Church, Religions and Cultures, and the Transformation of Society
Ross Kane, Virginia Theological Seminary
Enlarging the Cloud of Witnesses: Ancestors and the Church in Kwame Bediako and Jean-Marc Éla
- S19–200
Joint Session With: African Biblical Hermeneutics; African Association for the Study of Religions
Monday (19th) 1:00 PM–3:30 PM
Room: Range Ballroom – Crowne Plaza (CP)
Theme: Scripturalization and Orality in/as African Spirituality
Althea Spencer Miller, Drew University, Presiding
A. Paige Rawson, Drew University
The Archipelogics of Africana Biblical Hermeneutics: Africana, Orality, and Transtextual Biblical Interpretation in the Twenty-First Century (35 min)
Madipoane Masenya (Ngwan’a Mphahlele), University of South Africa
Navigating the Collusions and Contradictions of African Orality and the Digital Age in Understandings of the Bible (35 min)
Knut Holter, VID Specialized University, Norway
Isak—the Son of the Rainmaker—and the Bible: An Example of Resistance Hermeneutics in Zululand in the 1860s and 70s (35 min)
Sara Fretheim, University of Edinburgh
“Kasakyerew ho nimdefo, mo!” (Those gifted in the knowledge of writing of language, congratulations!): Kwame Bediako, Mother-Tongue Theology, and Orality—African Epistemologies and Spirituality (35 min)
Discussion (10 min)
