Interdisciplinary Humanities Africanist Writing Group (IHAWG)

Writing Africa Together: Inside the Interdisciplinary Humanities Africanist Writing Group

Robin P. Chapdelaine

At the Stanford Center for African Studies, graduate research is shaped not only in archives, classrooms, and field sites, but also in the shared spaces where ideas are tested, challenged, and refined. The Interdisciplinary Humanities Africanist Writing Group is one such space.

Meeting every Wednesday, the group brings together graduate students working across history, anthropology, political science, linguistics, and related fields. It provides a regular forum for writing, dialogue, and intellectual community, helping students move their projects forward while engaging broader questions about Africanist scholarship.

More than a writing workshop, the group creates a space for students to think together about how knowledge about Africa is produced. Participants discuss archival interpretation, language study, ethics, technology, development, and Africa’s possible futures. These conversations encourage students to ask not only what they are studying, but how their research methods, sources, and assumptions shape the stories they tell.

As doctoral candidate Amina Diop reflects, “Too often, Africa is treated as a site of intervention rather than a site of intellectual production.” The group actively challenges that framing by centering Africa as a place of theory, history, creativity, and intellectual life.

The Interdisciplinary Humanities Africanist Writing Group also connect virtually with students from the Center for African Studies at UC Berkeley, creating opportunities for cross-campus exchange and broader scholarly community. This reflects the Center for African Studies’ commitment to collaborative, rigorous, and ethically grounded scholarship. By creating a sustained community of practice, the group supports graduate students as they develop research that is both critically engaged and intellectually generative.