SKAnning Space from Africa: Seeing and Becoming

Conveners

• Hanna Nieber, Religionswissenschaft, Universität Bayreuth (contact person) Hanna.Nieber@uni-bayreuth.de
• Irina Turner, African Linguistics, Universität Bayreuth Irina.Turner@uni-bayreuth.de
• James Merron, African Studies, Universität Basel James.Merron@unibas.ch
• Susann Ludwig, African Studies, Universität Leipzig Susann.Ludwig@uni-leipzig.de

Summary

The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) radio telescope is in the process of becoming the world’s largest scientific instrument. Based in South Africa and extending across the continent, the SKA enables not only cutting edge science, but also new “becomings” of things and people: existing radio dishes are converted into astronomical instruments and a new generation of experts and scientists – such as astrophysicists, bioinformaticians as well as geographic information systems specialists – are currently being trained and are celebrated as Africa’s bright future.

In our working group’s workshop, we aim to attend to processes and conditions for these becomings, entangled with temporalities and spatialities of socio-technicality. Seeking different perspectives on becomings, we have invited people with different disciplinary backgrounds, ranging from astronomy to social science studies, anthropology, linguistics, and philosophy.

homepage of the Africa Off-Earth Network

Workshop - „SKAnning Space from Africa: Seeing and Becoming“ - 10.02. - 14.02.2020

The workshop outline can be found here. For more information and registration to the closed workshop sessions, please write to hanna.nieber@uni-bayreuth.de

Public lectures

11.02.2020, 09:30, NWIII H36
Davide Chinigò: “Becoming with the Square Kilometre Array”

12.02.2020, 09:30, NWII H20
James Chibueze: “Networks, Power, and the Africa Very Long Baseline Interferometry Network”

13.02.2020, 09:30, NWIII H36
Charles Ratsifaritana: "Development of Radio Astronomy in Madagascar"

Participants of the workshop:

• Basil Bucher, African Studies, University of Basel, Switzerland
  
  
• James Chibueze, Centre for Space Research, North-West University, South Africa
  
  
• Davide Chinigò, Department of Sociology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
  
  
• Christine Hanke, Media Studies, University of Bayreuth, Germany
  
  
• Siri Lamoureaux, LOST Research Network, Halle, Germany
  
  
• Samyukta Manikumar, Nairobi, Kenya
  
  
• Noluvuyo Matiwane, Rhodes University, South Africa
  
  
• Finbarr Odo, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria
  
  
• Tadej Pirc, Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
  
  
• Charles Ratsifaritana, Ecole Normale Superieur, Antananarivo, Madagascar