Skip to main content

Events

Black Europe: A Field on the Move

General Programming

dateNovember 12, 2025 timeWednesday, 10:00am–8:00pm EST location Second Floor Common Room, Columbia University, The Heyman Center
  • Registration required even by CU/BC ID holders. Registration closes November 7.

Cosponsors
  • The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities
  • Arts and Sciences Graduate Council
  • Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race
  • Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies
  • Department of Africana Studies (Barnard College)
  • Department of Anthropology
  • Department of French
  • Department of Germanic Languages
  • Department of History
  • Department of Political Science
  • European Institute
  • Small Axe Project
  • Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy
Organizer
  • Rochelle Malcolm (PhD candidate, History), Mayaki Kimba (PhD candidate, Political Science), and Zarino Lanni (PhD student, Anthropology)
Notes
  • Free and open to the public
  • Registration required.
  • Image Credit/Caption: Image source: ANEFO, National Archives of the Netherlands

Black Europe: A Field on the Move is a one-day, interdisciplinary conference open to the Columbia community and the public.

Scholars across disciplines are increasingly treating “Black Europe” as a pertinent object of study. Yet much disagreement remains on what “Black Europe” is. Does Black Europe describe a place, an identity, an aspiration, or something else? Scholars oscillate between terms such as “Afropean,” “African-European,” and “Black European.” Moreover, the institutionalization of Black European studies remains a work in progress, and views vary on whether Black European studies is an academic field, a subsection of Black Studies or African Diaspora Studies, or a reference point for a set of inquiries and practices that exceed the bounds of academic discipline. As a one-day conference, "Black Europe: A Field on the Move" encourages interdisciplinary conversation on these questions.

The conference will consist of four panel sessions and two keynote presentations. Full schedule available here.