Rationale
Professor Ibrahima Thioub devoted half a century of his life to teaching and research. He rose up through the ranks in the school system. He started as an elementary school teacher from 1976 to 1985, then became a high school teacher from 1986 to 1990, before he was hired in the History Department at Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) in 1990, after defending his doctoral dissertation in economic history, at the Université Paris VII - Denis Diderot. He served as chair of the History Department from 2006 to 2009, then as UCAD Rector from 2014 to 2020.
Professor Thioub is the co-founder of the École Doctorale Études sur l’Homme et la Société (ED ETHOS), the scientific and pedagogical council of which he is an honorary member; co-founder and co-director of the Groupe d’Études et de Recherche sur les Marginalités et l’Exclusion au Sénégal (GERMES); co-founder of the Laboratoire des Études Historiques sur les Inventions Culturelles (ETHIC) affiliated to École doctorale ARCIV; executive secretary of the Centre de Recherche sur les Politiques Sociales (CREPOS) affiliated to ED. ETHOS; director of the Centre de Recherche sur les Traites et les Esclavages (CARTE) affiliated to ED. ETHOS); president of the West African Research Association (AROA-WARA); chair of the Scientific Council of the Musée des Civilisations Noires; and was vice-president of the Board of Directors of the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (2021). Since June 2021, he has chaired Senegal’s Commission Nationale de la Bonne Gouvernance, a body of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) of the African Union.
Author of several articles and books, a member of editorial boards of several scholarly journals and academic associations, he has also supervised several doctoral dissertations in Senegal, elsewhere in Africa, and in France. He has been a visiting professor at several universities in Africa, Europe, and North America.
Also, throughout his career, he has always attached great importance to public education, especially higher education, and the need for the Senegalese and African universities to serve as spaces for research, teaching, and training for efficient and adapted solutions to the problems and needs of communities.
Professor Thioub’s rich career has earned him several awards including honorary doctorates from the University of Nantes in 2012, Sciences Po in Paris in 2017, and the University of Bordeaux-Montaigne in 2020, the Commander’s Medal in the Order of Academic Palms of France for his exceptional contribution to education in 2019, and the El Fassi Prize from the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie in 2021.
In recognition of Professor Thioub’s huge service to education, teaching, and research, his former students (some of whom are now his colleagues in Senegal, Africa, Europe, and the United States, while others serve in senior-level positions in the Senegalese administration or in other areas of activity) have decided to organize an international conference to pay tribute to their mentor and honor his influential career as a teacher, a scholar, and a higher education administrator. The conference will be organized in partnership with Université Cheikh Anta Diop and will take place on July 13, 14, and 15, 2023, at the Cheikh Anta Diop University, in Dakar, Senegal.
The themes of the conference are inspired among other things by Professor Thioub’s research, teaching, and other academic activities in areas including economic history, African historiography, systems of domination and their ideologies, slavery and human trafficking in Africa, prisons, and other forms of confinement.
This international conference offers the opportunity to revisit and interrogate key aspects of Prof. Thioub’s seminal work. We invite scholars, activists, artists, and men and women of culture to submit proposals for individual papers or panels (no more than 300 words) in line with the themes of the conference.
Conference Themes
- Public Education from Yesterday to Tomorrow
- Past and Present of Slavery, Slave Trades, and Human Trafficking in Africa
- Domination Systems and Their Ideologies
- African Historiography
- History and Memory
- Economic History of Senegal and Africa
- History of Social Margins: deviance, prisons, sorcery, etc.
- Cultural, Military, and Social History of Senegal and Africa
- Environmental History
- International Relations: From Antiquity to the Present
- Digital Humanities
Languages of the conference: French, English, and Senegalese national languages.
Deadline for proposal submission: March 12, 2023
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