2nd International Conference on Black Europe: Black European Studies in Transnational Perspective

Within Anglophone Postcolonial Studies, the African Diaspora has been long recognized as an important concept. The history and culture of African populations violently transported to the "New World" via the slave trade are the subjects of vigorous scholarly debates. The history of Black (Continental) Europeans, however, still remains largely unknown. Over the last two years, the Black European Studies Project (BEST) has emerged as an international forum of exchange for scholars of this underresearched subject.<br> <br> The first BEST conference, "Challenging Europe - Black European Studies in the 21st Century" was held in November 2005 in Mainz, Germany. It was conceived as a small, intense workshop, taking inventory of research on Black populations in various European nations, including Eastern Europe and urkey, and exploring the theoretical and methodological challenges faced by the emerging interdisciplinary and transnational field of Black European Studies. The 2nd International BEST Conference will endeavor to continue these debates in a broader context. This public, interdisciplinary encounter will facilitate cross-disciplinary discussion of previous scholarly research but will above all promote the development of new theoretical perspectives on Black Europe that might potentially inform both academic and political discourse. It will thus enable direct exchange among scholars working in the area of Black European history; it will encourage the formation of on-going scholarly networks focused on particular research questions; and it will help to make Black Europeans and their history as well as present visible beyond the bounds of academic discourse.<br>