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More info on the Bantu 11 webpage.

Upon invitation of Prof. Olorunshola Adenekan , Prof. Sebastian Dom & Prof. Koen Bostoen, Prof. Dr. Serawit Debele (Bayreuth University) will give the UGent Master of African Studies 2026 opening lecture.

In this talk, Prof. Dr. Serawit Debele explores how Amharic literary texts frame empire through the rural woman turned prostitute as a central site of moral and political discourse. She focuses on two novels published within twenty years of the end of the Italian occupation of Ethiopia (1935–1941). The first, Endewetach Kerech (She Never Returned), is a historical novel by Asefa Gebremariam, published in 1954. The second, Setegna Adari (Prostitute), is an autobiographical novel by Enanu Agonafer, published in 1964. She argues that these texts transform women’s mobility, sexuality, and urban migration into signs of imperial rupture, national shame, and “undesirable” social change. In these narratives, the rural woman turned prostitute emerges as an epistemic category through which social crisis is diagnosed and anxieties about unexamined embrace of siltane (western civilisation) are articulated.

Submission Deadline: 28-Feb-2026

As part of the ERC-funded CongUbangi project, this colloquium aims at bringing together scholars from different disciplines interested in Ubangi, Bantu and Central Sudanic languages and language speaking-communities in northern Republic of Congo, southern Central African Republic and northern Democratic Republic of Congo. Spanning multiple ecozones within the Congo rainforest, this area is home to an intricate demographic configuration where Bantu (Niger-Congo) and Central Sudanic (putative Nilo-Saharan) speaking groups are interspersed with Ubangi groups. The internal relationships among groups lumped under the label “Ubangi” are unclear. While their individual Niger-Congo affiliation looks promising, this is based on very little evidence. Linguistic hallmarks of this area include multidirectional language shift, contact and linguistic enclaves.

The region’s linguistic diversity is matched with human genetic diversity. The few available studies suggest significant genetic differentiation among populations also having distinct cultural and/or linguistic backgrounds, but genetic sampling is insufficient compared to other parts of Africa, especially among Ubangi and Central Sudanic speakers. Further, nothing is known about admixture patterns which might reveal the dynamics of early contacts in the region.

Archaeological research within the region has been sparse, leaving large gaps in the history of pre-colonial populations and population movements. While a deep-seated hypothesis deprived of linguistic or archaeological evidence argues that Bantu were the first to settle in this region, the astonishing geographic fragmentation of Ubangi subgroups such as Mundu-Baka and Mbaic and of Central Sudanic subgroups such as Sara-Bongo-Bagirmi, suggests that these might descend from the earliest layers of occupation in the region. Likewise, ethnoarchaeological data has revealed a continuity between Early Iron Age communities and the Ubangi speakers that inhabit the region today, suggesting the possible antiquity of these groups in the region.

With this framework in mind, we welcome contributions from linguistics, genetics, archaeology and related fields dealing with:
- Phonological and/or morphosyntactic accounts of yet undocumented or poorly known languages of the region
- Language contact phenomena (esp. borrowings and vocabulary shared across different language families)
- Linguistic features spreading areally through contact
- Enclaved varieties (language islands)
- Language shift
- Language stratigraphy
- Reconstruction (and comparison) of proto-languages of Ubangi, Bantu and Central Sudanic subgroups
- Methods and challenges with internal classificatory attempts within Ubangi, Bantu and Central Sudanic
- Population genetics
- Metallurgy, including iron production
- Monumentality of Bouar and adjacent regions
- Pottery analysis (e.g., stylistic, formal, and petrology)
- Lithic studies of Late Stone Age (and/or earlier) materials
- Population movements, including the Bantu Expansion
- Ethnography (e.g., hunting/foraging, pottery and iron production)
- Interactions between autochthonous foragers and pottery-producing communities

Deadlines:
Abstract submission: Submit an abstract of maximum 500 words (excluding references and/or figures) in pdf format to ubancs@ugent.be by 28th February 2026

Notification of acceptance: 30th April 2026

For all questions, please contact the organizers at ubancs@ugent.be.