African Studies at the University of Bayreuth: Unique in Europe

One in five people on earth lives in Africa. Nevertheless, specialist expertise on Africa and its diaspora is still rare. Only a few European universities are able to offer academic research and teaching on African societies and their diasporas. In Germany, Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig, Cologne and Frankfurt am Mainz are important centers for African studies. However, the University of Bayreuth is by far the university with the most professorships in this field.

Next year, African Studies in Bayreuth will also have its own building. The "Research Center Society, Technology and Ecology in Africa - Challenges in the 21st Century" (FZA) will open in 2025. This building was financed by the state and federal government as part of the research building competition. The 3,000 m² building will promote cooperation in African studies. At the heart of the building is the Open Creative Lab concept, a smart infrastructure that strengthens transdisciplinary research and teaching.  

The IAS is the common denominator for all those who work or study in the field of African Studies at the University of Bayreuth. This is the "round table", the place for discussion, coordination and orientation. This is because African Studies has grown steadily. An important step was the establishment of the art and culture space "Iwalewahaus" in 1981, which today houses the largest institutional collection of contemporary African art in Europe. The graduate school BIGSAS (Bayreuth International Graduate School) was founded in 2007. It is currently home to around 90 doctoral students. The University of Bayreuth also offers 15 undergraduate and postgraduate courses with a strong focus on African studies and has a library with over 200,000 books on African societies.

The crowning achievement of Bayreuth's Africa activities was the approval of the Cluster of Excellence "Africa Multiple: Reconfiguring African Studies", which was established in 2018 as part of the Excellence Initiative of the German federal and state governments. The Bayreuth Academy, which is also funded as part of the cluster, is a research project that conducts research into African visions of the future. The Tanzanian-German Center for East African Legal Studies (TGCL) is one of the oldest cooperation projects with East Africa. The Digital Research Environment (DRE) is our database and digital solution. The Peace and Conflict Research Network (PCRN) hosts research on war and decolonial approaches.

At the University of Bayreuth, there are around 45 professorships dedicated to African studies. Each professorship has its own research projects, such as Philosophy and Genre: Creating a Textual Basis for African Philosophy, which is funded by the European Research Council. The Bayreuth researchers have gone beyond a narrow territorial view of Africa to address the concerns of the diverse African diasporas, including those in Germany. It is becoming increasingly important for the IAS to address such issues.

None of the work to date would have been possible without the continuous support of international partners. The members of the University of Bayreuth work very closely with four cluster centers in Africa, which are located at Moi University in Eldoret (Kenya), Rhodes University in Makhanda (South Africa), Université Ki-Zerbo in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) and the University of Lagos (Nigeria). They also maintain intensive working contacts with 27 other partner universities in Africa, for example in Bamako, Dakar, Accra and Cotonou. They also cooperate with universities and research institutions in Bordeaux, Bloomington, Salvador da Bahia, Seoul, New Delhi, Kyoto, San José and Santiago de Cuba.