Partners across the globe join KASC and CGIS for virtual symposium, "Global African and Asian Studies: Perspectives across the Americas”

The University of Kansas African Studies Center (KASC) and the Center for Global & International Studies (CGIS) held “Global African/Asia Studies: Perspectives across the Americas,” a virtual event that took place Saturday, Jan. 31.

The meeting’s focus was creating connections between four universities in North and Central America, and in turn reflecting a desire to advance the concept of “Global Africa.”

“In contrast to a focus on Africa as an object of knowledge that ends at the borders of the African continent, this perspective considers the world in general from the perspective of African experience,” said Glenn Adams, director of the Kansas African Studies Center at KU. “African knowledge systems and ways of being continue to be a source of insight and inspiration for people around the world, providing desperately needed resources for the imagination of alternatives to the white supremacist constructions of past, present, and future that currently define the global order.”

The video conference allowed KU faculty related to four different area studies centers to collaborate (CGIS, KASC, CEAS, and CLACS), and also featured representatives from Centro de Estudios de Asia y África at El Colegio de México, the Programa Universitario de Estudios sobre Asia, África y Oceanía at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and the Cátedra de Estudios de África y el Caribe at the Universidad de Costa Rica.

“It was important in strengthening our connections to our peer centers in Latin America, to help us understand their experience in promoting area studies and to help them understand the work that we do at the area studies centers at KU,” said Luciano Tosta, director of graduate studies for the Center for Global & International Studies.

The event grew directly out of Adams and Tosta’s trip to Mexico City in April with resources from the KU Latin America Fund. While there, the two presented at a seminar at El Colegio de México and later went on to host a hybrid conference on Global Africa: Past, Present, Future with CGIS and KU’s African and African-American Studies (AAAS).

This meeting is currently planned to be followed by another virtual symposium, specifically looking at perspectives on Global Africa that is to expand to include partners in Brazil and on the African continent.

Adams and Tosta also plan to visit the Universidad de Costa Rica for an in-person symposium and are anticipating that students and faculty from the institutions will participate remotely in the annual KASC Graduate Research Workshop, which is set for May 6, 2026.