October 28, 2025 - CBESA Curates FLUP 2025 in Rio de Janeiro
For the second year in a row, the Center for Black European Studies & the Atlantic (CBESA) will curate the international portion of the FLUP Literary Festival in Rio de Janeiro.
October 10-11, 2025 - Middle Ground: Festa Literária das Periferias
In 2025, for its third edition, Middle Ground partners with Festa Literária das Periferias (FLUP), a festival born in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, to ask: what does it mean to write from the experience of rupture?
September 18, 2025 - CBESA is Curating FLUP and Pushing the Focus onto the Carribbean
Brazil and the Caribbean share deep historical roots: both were shaped by the Black diaspora, marked by colonial exploitation, and permeated by a legacy that gave rise to ideas capable of re-enchanting the world.
September 19, 2025 - Dr. Michael McEachrane and UN delegation in Colombia at the invitation of Vice-President Francia Márquez
CBESA's Michael McEchrane visits Columbia with a delegation of the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent for a Regional consultation for Spanish speaking Latin America on the draft United Nations declaration on the on the respect, protection and fulfilment of the human rights of people of African descent.
August 1, 2025 - Dr. Michael MacEachrane joins CBESA as a Senior Research Scholar-in-Residence (2025-2027)
We are thrilled to welcome Michael McEachrane as a Senior Research Fellow at CBESA. Michael is a researcher in Black European studies, human rights studies and postcolonialism and an international human rights activist from Sweden.
FLUP One of the Main Events of the 2025 France-Brazil Season
In 2025, Brazil and France will celebrate 200 years of diplomatic relations with a series of cultural, political, and social gatherings that reaffirm historic ties and renew cooperation between the two countries. The France-Brazil Season was announced by Presidents Lula and Emmanuel Macron, who recently met in Paris and will meet again soon in Nice.
June 30 - July 2, 2025 - The 66th Annual Society for French Studies Conference
The Society for French Studies will be holding their annual conference at the University of Bristol (England) this summer. The conference will feature 3 days of workshops, panels, and 3 plenaries. CBESA's director, Dr. Mame-Fatou Niang, will present one of these plenary lectures, titled "Global French Studies: Des Études françaises pour/de notre temps", on Day One (June 30) at 5:45 pm in the Great Hall.
June 22, 2025 - PhD Studentship Legacies of Transatlantic Slavery & Reparations Application Opens
University College of London is pleased to announce a fully-funded, 4-year PhD studentship for a Black Caribbean Non-UK Domiciled student to research the legacies of Transatlantic slavery and reparations. The student will be based at the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, within UCL's Department of History, supervised primarily by Professor Matthew J. Smith, Director of the CSLBS, with secondary supervision from Dr Clive Chijioke Nwonka, Associate Professor of Film, Culture and Society. Application Closes July 7th, 2025.
June 19 - 20, 2025 - Anna Julia Cooper: A Black Feminist at the Sorbonne Conference
The Sorbonne will be hosting a conference to pay tribute to the centennial year of African American scholar Anna Julia Cooper completing her doctorate ("The Attitude of France Toward Slavery During the Revolution") at the University. The conference will examine the many facets of Cooper and her work throughout history, as well as examine her legacy in both the United States and France.
May 21-23 , 2025 - Black France Noire Inaugural Symposium
CBESA is one of the Centers behind the BLACK | FRANCE | NOIRE project, an initiative looking at "Black” French Studies as a capacious field that merits exploration along multiple lines of inquiry.
April 23 , 2025 - Re-Thinking Identity, Community and Epistolary Forms in 18th-century England
Dr. Nicole Aljoe (Tufts Univeristy) "will explore the myriad ways in which letters by Black Britons not only contribute to complicating assumptions about identities, place and communities of Black people in 18th-century England, but also reveals a more expansive understanding of the discursive investments and formal diversity of Early Black print cultures"
April 15 , 2025- Launch of Global Network for the Study of Africans and People of African Descent (G-SAP)
This side-event on April 15th at the UN Headquarters in NYC will officially launch the Global Network for the Study of Africans and People of African Descent (G-SAP).
April 14-17, 2025- Fourth session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent
The fourth session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent will be held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, United States, from 14 to 17 April 2025, with the theme: Africa and people of African descent: United for reparatory justice in the age of Artificial Intelligence.
April 11-12, 2025- CAUSE 30th Anniversary Conference
Happy Anniversary to the Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy!
February 14, 2025 - The Revue des Colonies: Diasporic Networks and the Struggle for Abolition
CBESA Postdoctoral scholar, Jessica Balguy, presented a paper at this colloqium highlighting the first French periodical directed by people of color.
December 6-7, 2024 - Palabre/s en mode marron
Artist Bintou Dembélé presents Palabre/s en mode marron, a gathering of artists, academics, activists, and more with connections to Paris and the French West Indies.
November 25, 2024 - Decolonial Sweden Available for Pre-order!
Decolonial Sweden exposes the social and political relevance of European colonialism to Sweden and its place in the world. It is a book that points to why and how Sweden is to be included in global decolonial struggles.
November 11-17, 2024 - Festa Literaria das Periferias (FLUP 2024)
CBESA co-curated the 2024 edition of the Festival, which saw over 14,000 attendees.
October 3-5, 2024 - Global Black French Studies Across Time and Space
Dr. Niang will be the keynote speaker for the conference "Global Black French Studies across Time and Space: The Formation and Future of the Field," held at Boston College. The conference aims to explore the formation, growth, and challenges of Black French Studies across geographies, focusing on how this field has been understood, practiced, and resisted beyond the U.S., particularly in France, where universalism contrasts with the lived experiences of race and blackness.
September 19-20, 2024 - Technologies of Silence
Director Niang visited and participated in the Technologies of Silence conference presented by the Sound Justice Lab at the University of Virginia.
Learn more https://soundjusticelab.org/tos
April 10, 2024 - Towards a UN Global Black Studies Network
CBESA is part of a group that is looking to establish a UN Global Black Studies Network to promote research, teaching, learning and proliferation of knowledge and knowledge-based narratives on people of African descent across the world. The project would be a collaboration between UNESCO (with UNESCO Chairs on Black Studies), OHCHR and universities across the world.
March 11, 2024 - Dr. Jessica Balguy named a 2024 Woman in Science by the Collège des Sociétés Savantes Académiques de France
In a series of portraits highlighting remarkable women in the sciences, the Collège des Sociétés Savantes Académiques de France recognized CBESA postdoctoral fellow Dr. Jessica Balguy as a outstanding academic in the field.
🎤 Mame-Fatou Niang, Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies, Carnegie Mellon University
🎤 SM Rodriguez, Assistant Professor, Department of Gender Studies at LSE
🪑 Joanna Lewis, Director, Centre for Women Peace and Security, LSE
📅 30 Oct 2023, Monday
🕠 6.30pm to 8.00pm BST
📍 Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House, LSE
"Black France on Film", 12 July 2023
A conversation at Columbia in Paris with Dr. Maboula Soumahoro,
France's New Standing in Francophone Africa,
Africultures Conversation Series, November 2023
Invited symposium: “Designing Accurate Health Disadvantage Indices”
World Health Organisation, Geneva. 13-14 Dec 2023.
on 13-14 December, CBESA's Mame-Fatou Niang was part of an international group of experts meeting at the Fondation Brocher in Geneva to evaluate disadvantage indices, with particular focus on their potential to capture the impacts of structural racism and discrimination. Building on work done throughout fall23 with Carnegie Mellon University's students, Dr. Niang presented on the difficulty /urgent need to build such indices for vulnerable groups in France.
University of Edinburgh, The Centre of African Studies RACE.ED, 11 Oct 2023.