Africa as Method

Uoldelul Chelati Dirar is Associate Professor of African History at the Department of Political science, communication and international relations, University of Macerata, where he teaches African History and History of International Relations. His main research interests are focused on the impact of Italian colonialism in the Horn of Africa and on the process of elites formation in the region.Karin Pallaver is Associate Professor of African History at the Department of History and Cultures, University of Bologna, where she teaches African History and Indian Ocean History. Her main research interest is the history of money in currency in East Africa. On this topic, she has coordinated two research projects and published several articles and book chapters.

• Introduction.- The Field as an Archive.- Recherche des Sources en Afrique Equatoriale.- Moments of Sharing: Fieldwork in Ethiopia (1988–2008).- Rethinking Periodisations.- Which Middle Ages for Ethiopia?.- Ousanas, A Ruler at the Crossroad of Aksum’s History / (RIÉ 186 = DAE 8).- The First Muslims in Africa? Sources and Methods Regarding the Hijra to Abyssinia.- Questioning the Archive.- Islamic Legal Documents and Social Histories of Muslims in Eritrea and Ethiopia- Missionary Sources and African History: the Case of two Swedish Lutheran Missions.- Military Campaigning Abroad and Women’s Writing in Colonial Eritrea (1912–1918).- The Private and the Public in the Colonial Archive.- Colonial Encounters and Land Tenure in Early Italian Rule in Africa. A Critical Enquiry into Recently Rediscovered Personal Papers of Leopoldo Franchetti.- The “Reaction from Below”: Colonial Archives, Communist Propaganda and Messianic Movements in French Equatorial Africa.- Biographies and Autobiographies as Epistemological Challenges.- Songs, Poems and Left-Wing “Heroes”: The Soft Power of the Sudanese Left.- Somali Biography and Autobiography in the 20th Century.- Biography, Ethnography and Education in Colonial Libya. Panetta’s Papers at Florence State Archives.- Visualizing Africa’s Past.- Imaginaries and Self-representations: Coins as a Source for African History.- Photography of Colonial Libya in the former Fototeca del Museo Africano: a Provisional Appraisal.- Historical Sources and Political Trajectories.- Building the State in Eritrea: Notes on Epistemologies and Sources.- Imagining the Trajectories of the 2018 Peace Agreement Between Eritrea and Ethiopia.- Sources and Research on Liberation and Revolutionary Movements in the Horn of Africa.