Keynotes

Edward A. Alpers is Research Professor in the UCLA Department of History. He studied African History at Harvard College and received his Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 1966. Before joining UCLA in 1968 he taught for two years at the University of Dar es Salaam; in 1980 he taught at the Somali National University as a Fulbright Senior Scholar. He served as President of the African Studies Association (USA) (1994) and Chair of its National Program Committee (2001). His research and writing focus on international trade in eastern Africa through the nineteenth century, with special attention to the wider world of the western Indian Ocean. His major publications include Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa (1975); East Africa and the Indian Ocean (2009); and The Indian Ocean in World History (2014).

Maria da Conceição Neto, Angolan Historian, has been professor of Angolan History since 1989 and currently teaches at the Social Sciences Faculty at University Agostinho Neto (Luanda). She has been researcher at the Angolan National Archive. She obtained her PhD at SOAS (University of London, 2012) with the title In Town and Out of Town: A Social History of Huambo (Angola) 1902-1961. She was consultant of the Project "Angola – nos Trilhos da Independência" (2010-2015) by the Tchiweka Documentation Association, from which stemmed a vast audiovisual archive and the documentary “Independência”. Research Fellow at CEAN (Bourdeaux, 1999) and at EHESS (Paris, 2009), she is an associated researcher at the Institute for Contemporary History at the Universidade Nova, Lisbon and member of the scientific committee of the project CROME (CES, University of Coimbra). Among different recent publications there are “The Colonial State and Its Non-Citizens: “Native Courts” and Judicial Duality in Angola”, Portuguese Studies Review (2017) and “De Escravos a ‘Serviçais’, de ‘Serviçais’ a ‘Contratados’: Omissões, Perceções e Equívocos na História do Trabalho Africano na Angola Colonial”, Caderno de Estudos de Africanos (2017).

Ramon Sarró (PhD 1999; Habilitation 2010), Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Author of The Politics of Religious Change on the Upper Guinea Coast (2009) and co-editor, with R. Blanes e M. Balkenhol, of Atlantic Perspectives (2020). He directed the EU Programme "Recognizing Christianity" (2007-10), and took part in the EU Programme "Currents of Faith, Places of Memory" (2013-16). Currently he directs the project “Mangroves and Aluminium” (2018-19). He took part in the revitalization of the Bissau Ethnographic Museum (A. Mendes, R. Sarró and A. Temudo, O Museu Nacional Etnográfico da Guiné-Bissau: Imagens para uma História, 2019). Sarró and Marina P. Temudo (Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Lisbon) are the researchers in the film Chasing Shadows: The Revitalization of a Prophetic Movement in Guinea Bissau (dir. R. Canals, 2019). His interest has focussed on the Atlantic religious diasporas. He is preparing a monography on the invention of a Kongo prophetic alphabet.