2026 ASA Annual Meeting CFP

Program Chairs: Trevor Getz (San Francisco State University) and Sandra Manuel (Universidade Eduardo Mondlane) Submission Deadline: via Online Portal Extended Deadline: Sunday, March 22, 2026.

We are living through a period of historic disruption and reconfiguration. Global narratives, political alliances, and economic certainties that once dominated are giving way to a more dynamic and contested landscape. Rupture is everywhere: longstanding centers of geopolitical influence are shifting, new technologies are reshaping human interaction, climate change is altering where and how we live, and the rules for producing knowledge are being redefined in both subtle and overt ways. 

For Africa, these disruptions are neither entirely new nor wholly external. African societies have long navigated—and in many cases shaped—the intersections of disruption, adaptation, and renewal. However, the current moment is unique in its intensity and simultaneity: the decline of old hegemonies alongside the rise of new centers of influence; the acceleration of digitization alongside efforts to reclaim intellectual sovereignty; ecological crises alongside the resurgence of ecological wisdom; and democratic disillusionment amid the creation of new forms of citizenship and belonging. 

Yet rupture does not only signify crisis—it also opens pathways for remake. Indeed, Africans meet these crises not only with their own histories of rupture, but also their own blueprints for renewal. Across the continent, Africans are asserting diplomatic and cultural agency in global forums; pioneering strategies for food, energy, and knowledge independence; repurposing digital tools for resistance and preservation; and envisioning futures through Afrofuturist, feminist, ecological, and other creative lenses. African universities and intellectual collectives are reclaiming conceptual territory, challenging the limitations of donor-driven agendas, and broadening the archive of what is possible. African languages and epistemologies have become sites where remaking efforts are germinated. Transcontinental and intergenerational alliances—whether political, scholarly, or grassroots—are emerging as influential sites of solidarity and innovation as youth and diasporic communities assume key roles in intellectual and aesthetic reimaginings.