About the Forum

The forum fosters research and research dissemination, with two key goals:

– to overcome the limits of Euro-centric knowledge in social sciences and humanities and advocate and fundraise for a greater involvement of African researchers in Africa-related research
– to mainstream the scientific and societal contributions of Africa research at the University of Helsinki and beyond

Our core activities are:

Connect! We bring together researchers with an Africa focus from all faculties at the city centre campus.
Outreach! Through joint perspectives we outreach the limit of our individual disciplines and are able to reach out to Finnish society.
Understand! Through combining different research fields and regions, we contribute to a deeper understanding of Africa-related topics within academia and beyond.
Research! We offer a platform for the development of concerted interdisciplinary research activities and the forumulation of innovative research questions, methods and epistemologies.
Teach! We are committed to the creation of interdisciplinary, research-led teaching on a wide array of key topics, with a keen interest in wider societal impact.

We are focusing on transversal themes of global societal importance, which can only be explored through the diverse perspectives of our members, such as:

sustainable economic stability and prosperity
inclusive quality education for all
social justice
citizenship, displacement and movement
inclusive multilingual societies
equity in access to health, civic participation and political representation
conviviality in diverse societies
research ethics in Global North-Global South cooperation.

In our activities, we are committed to Achille Mbembe’s notion of pluriversity – “openness to dialogue among different epistemic traditions” (Mbembe 2016) and to Francis B. Nyamnjoh’s concept of conviviality (Nyamnjoh 2017).

The forum also contributes to the University of Helsinki’s Africa programme with insight from the social sciences and humanities.