Call for Papers: Consortium of African and Asian Studies (CAAS) 2025 Symposium

Submission deadline: December 31, 2024

Leiden University invites panel and paper submissions from advanced graduate students and faculty of the Consortium of Asian and African Studies member universities (Leiden, INALCO, SOAS, HUFS, Columbia, SISU, TUFS) for the 15th annual CAAS symposium, slated for June 2025. For this occasion, we are going to Dakar: In the aim of realizing the consortium’s long-cherished aim of furthering concrete and productive “North-South” as well as “East-West” experience and exchange, approved panels and papers will be incorporated and integrated into the Africa-Asia: A New Axis of Knowledge ConFest, which will be held in Dakar, Senegal from June 11th-14th, 2025, where they will be listed under a CAAS label. While the open call for papers for this event has already closed, a special dispensation has been arranged to allow applicants from the CAAS consortium universities to submit their proposals until December 31st, 2024 at the latest. Submitted panel and paper proposals will be pre-screened by Leiden University and Leiden’s International Institute of Asian Studies (IIAS), a ConFest co-sponsor. The ConFest selection committee will then assist in finalising the composition of the panels, allowing the integration of additional participants, and thus providing further interactive opportunities for CAAS participants.

The event will primarily take place on the campus of the Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD), a co-sponsor of the event, with roughly 500 participants expected to take part. In addition to conferences and workshops on the university campus, the event will also be held in various locations around the city, blending an academic conference with a civic-cultural-artistic festival, including guided tours led by local activists and leaders from social and creative movements.

The collaborative mission of Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD, Dakar, Senegal), Collective Africa-Southeast Asia Platform (CASAP, Bangkok, Thailand) and the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS, Leiden, The Netherlands) aims to stimulate inquiry into the rich resources offered by the city of Dakar and its surroundings. In this way, the city itself enables the materialization of an experiential Conference-Festival (ConFest) that celebrates diversity within academia, but that also extends beyond academia into civil society and the arts.

The ConFest aims to solidify an infrastructure of engagement, bringing together participants from a broad array of disciplinary backgrounds and regional specializations including scholars, artists, intellectuals and educators based in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere around the world. Over the course of four days in Dakar, participants will be encouraged to think both comparatively and holistically about the challenges and possibilities of cross-continental and trans-regional encounters.

The ConFest is organised into 12 clusters, each addressing key issues through a local-global perspective. CAAS applicants are kindly asked to categorize their proposed panel or individual paper under one of these 12 cluster headings.

1. Human-Nature-Technology: Interactions and Responses
2. Geo-political-economic Hegemonies: Cartographies and Historiographies
3. Economic Globalisation: Prosperity or Pain?
4. The Role of Local Communities: Society against States and Corporations?
5. Knowledge-making: Institutions, Objects, Cultural Ownership
6. Arts, (Digital) Media and Culture: Creativities, Contestations and Collaborations
7. Multiple Ontologies: Religions, Religiosities, Philosophies and Languages
8. Negotiating Margins: Power, Agencies, Representations, Resistances
9. Foodscapes: Cultivation, Livelihood, Gastronomy, Agrico-Cultural Exchanges, Appropriations
10. Well-being, Sport (football!), Medicine, Well-dying
11. ‘Pan-Africanism’, ‘Bandung Spirit’, ‘Global South’ Futures and the New World Order
12. ‘AfricAsia’ in an Entangled World: Migrations, Diasporas, Creolities

A detailed description of the clusters can be found at the bottom of the event webpage.

Submission
English is the language of the symposium as in the past CAAS Symposia. We welcome applications from graduate students, post-docs, and faculty members. If you don’t wish to your paper to be considered for publication in the proceedings, you will not be required to submit a full paper. Visual presentations in lieu of written ones are also welcome. All presenters are required to submit a presentation title and a brief abstract (max. 300 words). In the case of pre-organized panels, please also include a panel abstract (max. 300 words). The number of panelists/presenters is limited to a maximum of four (4), excluding the chair.

Note: If you hail from a CAAS university and have already submitted an individual or panel proposal for the 2025 Dakar ConFest, you need not undertake any additional action.

How to submit your proposal (individual/panel)
To submit the proposal, you may use the standard ConFest submission link: https://www.abstractscorecard.com/cfp/submit/login.asp?EventKey=GMAEAKPM; the same proposal system can also be accessed via the AA3 Call for Proposals website. Guides for the submission can be found here: Individual Paper (opens new window) | Panel (opens new window)

Submissions from CAAS member universities will first go through an internal selection by the CAAS committee members and IIAS. To facilitate the pre-selection process and help us identify the CAAS submissions, two special submission categories have been created: CAAS-Individual Paper and CAAS-Panel. Submitters who are participating in the CAAS call for Proposals must submit their proposals under one of these two categories, which can be located on the form page under “Submission Type”. These special submission categories are open until to December 31st (applicants from CAAS may ignore the earlier submission deadline listed on the website for general applicants).

Regarding Accomodation
UCAD has 3 university accommodation buildings, offering 45 rooms, which will be offered to AA3 participants on a first-come, first-serve basis. The rates per room per night range from EUR 28 to EUR 62 per room per night, depending on the room and occupancy type. The IIAS will publish this information after the selection process has concluded.

There are also several affordable hotels close to the university. The average rates per night are from EUR 65 to EUR 88, with possibly lower rates via providers such as Booking.com. Information on this will also be available via the IIAS.

For approved CAAS graduate student participants in particular, the IIAS is also in the process of exploring homestay possibilities.

Important Dates
- Deadline for proposal submission: December 31st, 2024
- Notification of acceptance: January 31st, 2025
- Symposium dates: Wed.-Sat. June 11th-14th, 2025

Note that as in all previous instances of the CAAS symposium, in principle the host university facilitates logistics but does not provide funding for travel, accommodation, or other expenses such as conference registration fee (which has not yet been set but is estimated to be in the range of approx. 100-150EUR/USD).

Further questions may be addressed to Leiden’s CAAS coordinator, Dr. Ethan Mark.

We look forward to seeing you in Dakar!