Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Leeds Beckett event to explore the history of the Congo Free State
The one day international symposium is hosted by the University’s Centre for Culture and the Arts and supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). It will take place at the University’s Rose Bowl building.
Dr Rob Burroughs, organiser of the event and Senior Lecturer at Leeds Beckett, explained: “Our event brings together humanities-based academics working on King Leopold II's Congo Free State (1885-1908). In particular, the symposium aims to enable dialogue between academics with different linguistic and disciplinary expertise in order to understand more fully the transnationalism of the Congo Free State, and of the humanitarian campaign against Leopold's control of the region.”
The event will include panel presentations chaired by Dr Grainne Goodwin, Senior Lecturer in History at Leeds Beckett and Sarah de Mul, Senior Lecturer of Literary Studies at the Open University of the Netherlands. Panel members include academics from Cambridge University, the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Tervuren), Hamburg University, Carroll College, Montana, USA, Uppsala University, University of Central Lancashire, Northumbria University and KU Leuven in Belgium.
The symposium brings together those involved in the research initiative, The Congo Free State across Languages, Media and Cultures’, which was launched at Uppsala University in September 2014. It is funded by the NOW, Uppsala University, the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, and Leeds Beckett University.
Attendance is free. To register, or for more information, please contact r.m.burroughs@leedsbeckett.ac.uk.