BIEA’s research themes set strategic priorities for current and future projects by our researchers, associates and grant recipients. Developed and reviewed by the BIEA’s Research Committee, these themes encourage distinctive and interconnected research. We especially encourage applicants for our annual research grants to consider how their proposal might fit with one of these themes.
Find out how researchers have interpreted these themes in our BIEA Annual Review, and also our latest news.
Amid today’s geopolitical reconfigurations, African states, governments, peoples, ideas, and cultures increasingly become important forces on the international stage, outside the continent. The climate emergency, war in Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic, immigration debates in Europe, and other crises, but also cultural phenomena such as the worldwide rise of Afrobeats and success of the African movie industry, have not only demonstrated Africa’s interconnectedness with the world, but also how Africans shape the international sphere and become independent forces of global political and cultural change. What drives Africa’s role in the world? How will global politics, culture, and thinking reshape based on forces driven by Africans, from Africa to the world?
There is a growing tendency to discount knowledge about the past, with archaeology and historicized ways of thinking seen as an unaffordable luxury irrelevant to an African future. At the same time, historical narratives and knowledge play an ever more potent role in discussions about national cohesion, and in debates and litigation over land rights, citizenship, and the politics of culture and heritage. Opportunity also comes from wider debates over the nature of scholarship and decolonisation of knowledge. Challenge and opportunity are linked, and the past – whether deep, or recent – must be revisited and retold from new perspectives. Archaeology, ethnography, anthropology, history, and a host of complementary disciplines can be used to retell the past.
Climate change, bio-diversity loss, urbanisation, large infrastructure projects, and technological innovations all impact the environments in which people live in ways that are having, and have long had, profound demographic, socioeconomic, cultural and political effects. It is critical that these changes – including their histories, their varied and complex impacts, the challenges and opportunities that they throw up, how these changes are conceptualised, negotiated, understood and represented, and the varied responses of governments, ordinary citizens and other stakeholders (including cultural actors) – are studied to better understand the past, present, and possible futures.
Often seen simply as problematic, urbanisation is also a driver of creativity and innovation – from music-making and art to political mobilisation and mobile banking. This theme encourages research that explores and questions peoples’ imaginations, negotiations, and everyday realities of urban life today and/or in the past.
Africa’s ‘digital revolution’ creates new realities, and provokes fresh thinking, on how power is mobilised, organised, and exercised. Social movements, street protests, democratic elections, state authority, and economic innovation are enabled and constrained in different ways as communication technologies, new and old, are innovated, imported, adapted, and controlled. The BIEA brings its commitment to empirically grounded and multi-disciplinary local scholarship to promote research that builds world-class knowledge on the digital age in and from the region.
Across the region the idea of who constitutes the youth commonly extends to people in their 30s. This theme looks at the lived experiences, concerns, identities and strategies of the current youth, as well as at the changing and possible educational, socio-economic, employment, cultural, political, and environmental contexts which will help to shape the lives of future generations.
BIEA researchers, associates and affiliates are required to adhere to international research ethics standards for humanities and social sciences. Before commencing fieldwork, they must demonstrate that have obtained the necessary research permissions, are compliant with data protection regulations, and have completed a risk assessment. Grant recipients are expected to secure all relevant approvals from their home institutions. Both BIEA researchers and grant recipients must also observe the BIEA Code of Conduct.
For further information download BIEA’s Research Policy, Data Protection Policy, and the BIEA Code of Conduct.
View policies & guidelines
There are many reasons to become a member of the BIEA and join our research community. The BIEA membership is open to all researchers and early career researchers.
Get involved
