The International Consortium for the Study of Africans in Ireland (ICSAI) successfully organised an interdisciplinary conference on Africa in Ireland: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives at Queen’s University Belfast from April 28th to April 29th.
This conference aimed to address the historical presence of Africans and the Black diaspora in the past, present, and future on the island of Ireland. It critically engaged with this presence and the convergences of Irish-African cultural, political and religious relationships and connections. How does the presence of African-descended people in Ireland disrupt the notion of Irish monoraciality? How should we theoretically address issues of race in the defining of Irish national identity in light of historical and contemporary Black Irish identities? What is the nature of the relationship between Africa and the African Diaspora in Ireland? What remains of Ireland’s soft religious colonialism and the mission project? How did Ireland’s postcoloniality align with pre- and post-independence subjugated African nations?
These and many more themes were interrogated by speakers and delegates at the conference which was well received and attended.
the conference was particularly interested in the following topics
– Black Irish Studies
– Africa in Ireland
– The relationship between Africa and the African Diaspora in Ireland
– Ireland’s soft religious colonialism and the mission project
– Ireland’s postcoloniality and alignment with pre- and post-colonial African nations
– Notions of Blackness and Africanness
– Irishness and Afro-Europeanism
– History of African migrations to Ireland pre- and post- Celtic Tiger
– The interaction of categories like nation, gender, class, and religion within the category of Africans in Ireland
– How Black Irish have conceived themselves historically
– Africans in Irish Studies within the larger field of Black Diasporic Culture/Diaspora Studies
– Negotiating Black Consciousness in Ireland
– Black Cultural Production on the island of Ireland
– The relationships of the Black Irish to other ethnic minorities on the island
– African students in Ireland
– Centring Africa as a decolonised subject for investigation in the Irish curriculum
Highlights of the conference included:
Keynote Lecture: “Challenges and Opportunities for African Students in Irish Higher Education” Salome Mbugua, Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission
Panel 1: Twentieth-Century Perspectives on Africans and Race
Chair: Maurice Casey, QUB
Jack Crangle, Maynooth University, “‘No Race Hate Here’? Black Migrants, Racism and Denial in Twentieth-Century Ireland”
Fiona Bateman, University of Galway, “Kidnapped Biafran Children and an Ibo Colony in Ireland (1970-1972)”.
Kevin O’Sullivan, University of Galway, “Ireland in the NGO Moment: Aid and the Othering of Africa from Biafra to Live Aid”
Panel 2: People of African Descent in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Ireland
Chair: Nik Ribianszky, QUB
Jonathan Wright, Maynooth University, “The Case of John Richardson: an Enslaved African in Eighteenth-Century Ulster”.
Richard McMahon, Mary Immaculate College Limerick, “Music, History and the Representation of the Experiences of an African American in pre-Famine Ireland”.
Mark Doyle, Middle Tennessee State University, “Black Spirituals for Irish Evangelicals: The Fisk Jubilee Singers’ Irish Tours, 1873-6”
Panel 3: Material and Textual Legacies
Chair: Mark Doyle, Middle Tennessee State University
Olusegun Morakinyo, TCD, QUB, & University of South Africa “African Collections in Museums in Ireland”
Aoife O’Brien and Anthony Haughey, National Museum of Ireland, “African Collections at the National Museum of Ireland: Historical Perspectives and Future Potentials”
Briony Widdis, QUB, “Finding Names: Ireland, Individuals, and the Royal African Company in the UK National Archives”
Panel 4: Finding Sources, Telling Stories in Ireland, Britain, and America
Chair: Jonathan Wright, Maynooth University
Bill Hart, Ulster University, “Do Black Lives Matter to Irish Historians?”
Simon Newman, University of Glasgow, “Slavery and reparative justice in Britain: historical research and cultural productions.”
Nik Ribianszky, QUB, “Some Brief Comments on Transitioning the Hart Data on Africans in Ireland to a Database”
Panel 5: Blackness in Contemporary Ireland
Chair: Mark Doyle, MTSU
Phil Mullen, TCD, “Contested Texts of Shared Blackness: Perceptions of Blackness amongst Africans and Black Mixed Race in Ireland”
Mindi McMann, College of New Jersey, “‘Home is Neither Here Nor There’: the African Diaspora in Contemporary Irish Culture”
Miriam Nyhan Grey, NYU, “Black, Brown and Green Voices: Creating Community”
Panel 6: African Students in Ireland
Chair: Phil Mullen, TCD
Aydin Anil Mucek, UCD, “African Students in Ireland: Irish Racism and Political Agency of African Students in Ireland in the 1960s”
Gabriel Opare, TCD, “What Happened to the Nigerian Doctors Trinity College Trained in the Last Century?”
Eric Morier-Genoud, QUB, “Africans at Queen’s University Belfast: a history”
Roundtable: Africans in Irish Higher Education
Moderator: Nik Ribianszky, QUB
Irenitemi Abolade, TUD
Dr. Sister Felicity Kalu, QUB
Asha Larson-Baldwin, QUB
Jamie Lukas Campbell, QUB
Closing Address
Hakim Adi, University of Chichester
Cultural Event: History of Africans in Northern Ireland
Chairs: Henri Mohamed and Eric Morier-Genoud, QUB
https://www.qub.ac.uk/research-centres/CentreforPublicHistory/africa-in-ireland/#29-april-1706789-2
