03/07/2026 09:00
- 19:30
HALL: Parenzo - A3
Contact:
Macconi I.
Chair:
Maganya I.,
Sakuba X.
Religion plays a fundamental role in Africa, shaping social relations, moral orders, identities, and political authority. While it has often served as a powerful resource for empowerment and the pursuit of equality, it has also contributed significantly to the production, legitimation, and persistence of multiple forms of inequality. Adopting a multidisciplinary perspective, this panel examines the ambivalent role of religion - including Christianity, Islam and African religious traditions - as both a vehicle for emancipation and a mechanism of domination in African contexts, from the colonial period to the digital present.
Drawing on the collaborative experience of a well-established Euro-African network of scholars and on different empirical and theoretical case studies, the panel explores how religious institutions, discourses, and practices intersect with structures of race, gender, slavery, colonial violence, education, and epistemic authority. It seeks to foster dialogue among historians, scholars of religion, theologians, and practitioners working on Africa and the African diaspora.
The panel invites three additional contributions addressing different religious traditions, regions, and historical periods. It particularly welcomes papers that conceptualize religion in Africa as a site of contestation and resistance, as well as inequalities, and that adopt comparative, decolonial, or interdisciplinary approaches. The panel will be organized around four thematic sections: (1) religion and power dynamics (colonial legacies); (2) religion and gender dynamics; (3) religion, knowledge production and epistemic authority; and (4) religion and socio-cultural dynamics.
