African Worlds Institute - IMAF, UMR 8171

The African Worlds Institute (IMAF) is a joint interdisciplinary research unit (history, art history, anthropology, political science, legal history, archaeology, and geography). It is located at two sites: the MMSH in Aix-en-Provence and the Campus Condorcet in Aubervilliers. Research focuses on the entire African continent and its diasporas, and is organized around six themes:

• Gender, Body, and Power
• The Creation and Circulation of Knowledge
• Economies, Labor, Migration
• Powers, Spaces, Temporalities, and uses of the past
• The Creation of Religion: Polyphonic Terrains
• Art: Politics of Form

These themes are linked by four cross-cutting themes: Longue durée and Contemporary Worlds; Sources, Fields, and Archives; Alternative Writing; Reflexivity, Positionality, and Situated Epistemologies.

IMAF is involved in the African Studies Scientific Interest Group (GIS), which it led until September 2021. It is also a constituent structure of the multidisciplinary research network that brings together European institutions working on Africa: the Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies (AEGIS). Finally, it is a member of the following research labs: HASTEC (History and Anthropology of Knowledge, Technology, and Beliefs); TEPSIS (Transformation of the State, Politicization of Societies, Institution of the Social); and LabexMed (Human and Social Sciences at the Heart of Interdisciplinarity for the Mediterranean).

Deputy Directors: Anne Doquet, Marie-Aude Fouéré, Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye, Violaine Tisseau

Unit website:  https://imaf.cnrs.fr/