Organisation : Émilie Corswarem (ULiège), Camille Dasseleer (UCLouvain), Anne-Sophie Gijs (UCLouvain) et Silvia Mostaccio (UCLouvain).
April 15, 2026 – UCLouvain
Louvain-la-Neuve, Salle du Sénat académique, place de l’Université 1
On April 16, 2026, the Faculty of Philosophy, Arts and Letters will award an honorary doctorate to historian Olivette Otele, professor of the Legacies and Memory of Slavery at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at London University.
On this occasion, on April 15, an interdisciplinary doctoral training day is organised for researchers in history, art history, literature, as well as political sciences and social sciences. This day aims to lead to a collective reflection on the historiographical and societal issues that guide Olivette Otele’s work. We invite young researchers (PhD students and postDOC) to share a specific aspect of their ongoing investigations – their questions, methods or results – and to explain how they echo the theoretical perspectives and research topics developed by Olivette Otele.
Otele is the author of important publications on the African captives’ trade that shaped the political, economic, social, cultural and artistic life in Africa as well as in the Americas and in Europe. The titles of her latest books explain the approach she adopts in her work: African Europeans: An Untold History (Hurst & Company, 2022) and Post-Conflict Memorialization: Missing memorials, Absent Bodies (MacMillan, 2021). In Otele’s work, the global system of slavery in 16th-19th centuries is treated in a connected way. She explores the constant interplay between individual journeys and collective history, which she constructs through repeated back-and-forth movements between the past and the present. Her research examines trauma, resistance, memory and counter-memories as they are conveyed through bodies and narratives, but also through objects and spaces ranging from ports to museums. Alongside questions of memory, she also gives substantial attention to the discourses and artistic representations of people with dual heritage, particularly African Europeans. As publicly engaged scholar, Olivette Otele also works as a consultant for the implementation of reparation actions by public and private institutions, while questioning the very notion of reparation and the ways it can be achieved.
The workshop will open with a lecture by Olivette Otele on Fragmented histories, amnesia of memory and controversial representations: What should we do with our colonial past?
Presentations by PhD students and postdoctoral researchers will follow, in dialogue and in interaction with OIivette Otele.
Four thematic focuses are proposed:
1. (Re)telling and (re)writing the past and the present in another way. How can we create a narrative that accounts for visible and/or invisible actors? How might we make visible the intra-societal and/or global power games? How can an epistemological and methodological decentering in the human/social sciences — especially in history, literature, international law and international relations — be achieved?
2. The challenges of representation. “White” and “Black”; dual heritage people. How can we question, use, and articulate colonial-postcolonial-decolonial perspectives? How should we work on the influence of discourse and representations on lived experiences, imaginaries, bodies, and artistic, scientific, and literary languages?
3. Memories, silences and forgetfulness in the face of a shameful, difficult or painful past. At the level of the individuals, groups and institutions: what is being commemorated/recalled, why, by whom, for whom, and how? What is being silenced? Why? What are the biases of counter-memories and their effects on bodies, objects, and artistic production?
4. Beyond memory. The geopolitics of tangible and intangible heritage, with a focus on literary, artistic, legal, economic processes. Which cultural policies should be adopted, or even institutionalised, in order to remedy past cultural spoliations (objects, archives…) and/or to normalise fair and dignifying aesthetic paradigms on the question of race in the arts?
PhD students and postdoctoral researchers who wish to present a research question or an aspect of their ongoing work linked to one of the abovementioned issues are invited to show their interest by submitting an abstract, no later than February 23, 2026, at the following addresses: silvia.mostaccio@uclouvain.be and camille.dasseleer@uclouvain.be. The subject line of the email should read: “Journée Otele 15 avril”, and the submission must include the title of the presentation, a 15-20 line abstract, and a short academic biography (5-10 lines).
This study day will be eligible for credit as part of doctoral programmes.
Organised by : Émilie Corswarem (ULiège), Camille Dasseleer (UCLouvain), Anne-Sophie Gijs (UCLouvain) and Silvia Mostaccio (UCLouvain).