Inaugural Lecture: Decolonising Area Studies

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An online public lecture with Cardiff University’s School of Law and Politics’ Professor Ambreena Manji, run by the Global Language-based Area Studies research theme under the School-wide Crisis and Culture research theme.

Much international development funding proceeds from and perpetuates unequal relations between the global north and the global south. How can we rethink such funding streams, decolonise area studies and bring in other perspectives?

Further information about Professor Ambreena Manji is available on the university website.

Cultures of Crisis
The narrator of Ali Smith’s post-Brexit novel Autumn (2016) remarks of the contemporary moment: ‘It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. Again.’ Smith expresses here not just the sense that the recent past has been perceived in terms of an apparently never-ending series of crises (from the banking crash of 2007-2008 to the current Covid-19 pandemic), but also (with a nod to Dickens) acknowledges that our permanent state of crisis can only be understood as novel if we operate with a very short historical memory.

If Smith is asking us to get some perspective, there may also be an invitation here to interrogate our response to crisis. Originally a term used in medicine to indicate the turning point of a disease, leading to recovering or death, the word contains in its Greek root the verb krinein, meaning to judge or discriminate. So, a crisis is also a moment of decision that, as in the current Covid pandemic, can excite visions of radical change as much as it suggests a terminal decline. Could ‘the worst of times’ in fact lead to ‘the best of times’? And how does crisis help us to imagine those alternatives?

In the academic year 2020-2021, the School of Modern Languages will host a series of events, run by its three research themes, which address the notion of crisis and our responses to it in contemporary and historical perspective. These events will ask how our sense of crisis and its possibilities are constructed in a range of media and discourses. All events will be free and held online, with registration required, and recordings will also be made available on the School YouTube channel.

Simultaneous Translation
The event will be delivered in the medium of English. You are welcome to ask questions in the medium of Welsh during the Q&A session. If you intend to do this, please contact mlang-events@cardiff.ac.uk by Wednesday 21 October to request simultaneous translation. Please note that 10% or more of those planning to attend will need to request this provision in order for it to be sourced and will be subject to resource availability.

Registration
We apologise that the entire registration page is not available in the medium of Welsh. Unfortunately, the platform we use does not offer this service.

Recording of Event
Please note this event will be recorded.