2025 - Listening to Africa: Englishes in the Global South (Bern)

Organizers: Zoë Lehmann Imfeld, Gwynne Mapes, and Crispin Thurlow

In June 2025, we are inviting SAUTE colleagues and any others to join us in reflecting on the way our work engages, or might engage, with English languages and literatures in/from Africa. With 27 of its 54 countries using English as an official or secondary language, Africa is home to an estimated 240 million English speakers and has produced four Nobel laureates writing in English. These sorts of figures are obviously complex and fraught, but English continues to have a considerable presence in the continent. 

One does not have to be an “Africanist” to turn one’s attention to Africa, to reflect momentarily on its particular relationship with English languages and literatures. While the conference organizers will be glad to receive submissions addressing African scholarship, African writers, and/or African settings, the conference is open other perspectives from the Global South. As always, SAUTE colleagues are invited to submit other examples of their current work too. Regardless, the conference will be a special chance to consider how English studies in Switzerland responds to current work on decoloniality and Southern theory. The organizers plan to create a dedicated space for a discussion about these issues too.

Listening to Africa will feature three internationally renowned keynote speakers who will between them address the conference theme from the perspectives of sociolinguistics, literary studies, and cultural/media studies. The speakers are: 

Prof. Dr. Atiqa Hachimi (University of Toronto, Canada)

Prof. Dr. Moradewun Adejunmobi (University of California at Davies, USA)

Prof. Dr. Nicky Falkof (University of Witwatersrand, South Africa)

Please visit the conference website for the Call for Papers and for various practical information about the conference (e.g. programme, travel and accommodation).