2013
IAHR African Trust Fund: Research & Publication Grant Applications for 2014
IAHR African Trust Fund
Research & Publication Grant Applications for 2014
Purpose
The IAHR African Trust Fund seeks to facilitate and promote the advancement of research and the development of scholarship on religion in the African continent (and nearby islands) by encouraging scholarly and contextual research initiatives and practices, as well as publications.
The IAHR African Trust Fund aims to encourage and acknowledge the generation of scholars whose research is deemed to hold significant future promise to increase knowledge and contribute to the historical, social and comparative study of religion in the African continent (and nearby islands).
Thus, the IAHR African Trust Fund herewith invites young scholars in particular of any ethnic/national origin, working and/or studying in any higher academic or research institution on the African continent (and nearby islands), whose research project needs financial support or whose publication in an African publishing house (scientific journal) requires a subsidy.
Grant Amount
The total grant allocation for 2014 is US$4000. The grant application is divided into two categories and successful applicants will be awarded the respective amounts within the specific category:
Category 1: Research and/or Publication
2 X Award of US$1000
Category 2:Research and/or Publication
4 X Award of US$500
Eligibility Criteria
Applicants have to be scholars resident in Africa and associated with any higher academic or research institution within this context. We encourage applications from members to the IAHR member associations, namely the African Association for the Study of Religion (AASR), the Association for the Study of Religion in Southern Africa (ASRSA), and the East African Association for the Study of Religion (EAASR). Members of the Nigerian Association for the Study of Religion (NASR), no longer a member to the IAHR, may apply if they are also individual members to the AASR.
Evaluation Mechanism & Criteria
Applications will be evaluated by the Board of Trustees of the IAHR African Trust Fund, and the board will consult specialists in the relevant fields when needed. Applications will be evaluated according to the following criteria:
1. The originality, quality, importance and impact of the proposed study as it relates to the historical, social and comparative study of religion in the African continent (and nearby islands).
2. Adherence to the best practices of research methodology and theory employed.
3. The relevance of the study to the African continent (and nearby islands).
Submission Timeframe
Applications are open till 30th January 2014. Grant-winning applicants will be announced on 20th February 2014. Note that all grants will be awarded to the successful applicants at the end of February 2014.
Conditions of Grants
Applicants who receive the grant should submit a copy of the publication or a research report (of no less than 5 pages) that summarises the project’s findings to the IAHR African Trust Fund. The publication or completed research project should acknowledge the support received in the form of an IAHR African Trust Fund Grant. The IAHR African Trust Fund will be allowed to reproduce or report the summary and parts of the report on the IAHR website, annual reports, and any other document or medium for the purpose of informing its stakeholders on the study findings. In all these publications, the authorship of the research will be clearly attributed to the applicant.
Application Form
Send a brief covering letter addressed to the IAHR African Trust Fund stating that your submission is for consideration for the IAHR African Trust Fund Grant and include the following required materials:
1. Name of Applicant
2. Email, Telephone Number and Mailing Address of the Applicant
3. Name of University, Department, Research Centre or Institute
4. Name(s) of IAHR African Member Association(s)
5. Title of Research/Publication Proposal
6. A research proposal of not more than four single-spaced pages detailing the aims/objectives, specific research questions, methodology and theoretical issues, the rationale and plan of research ( time frame), and a detailed, one-page budget should be attached, indicating the amount being applied for and the exact purposes for which it will be used. If application is for only publication purposes, also indicate to what specific journal or book and evidence of what sum is required for such publication.
7. Brief curriculum vitae and a statement of qualifications that specifically addresses the research project.
8. Include two letters of reference from senior scholars, one of whom MUST be a member, preferably an executive member of the IAHR member associations.
Completed applications forms are to be submitted as an electronic copy file in PDF or MS Word format in an attachment via email to the Secretary of the African Trust Fund Board of Trustees, Dr. Afe Adogame [A.Adogame@ed.ac.uk]. Please include in the electronic copy file the applicant’s last name e.g. Eliza.pdf / Eliza.doc. The subject line in the email should read “IAHR African Trust Fund Application 2014” – Note, no hard copies will be accepted.
For more information on the IAHR African Trust Fund Applications, please contact the Secretary of the African Trust Fund Board of Trustees at A.Adogame@ed.ac.uk.
2013
A tribute to Chirevo Kwenda
The African Association for the Study of Religion has learned with great sadness, the passing away of Professor Chirevo Kwenda of the University of Cape Town. He will be missed and the memories of his work will remain with us and to his many students. Here is a short statement from the University of Cape Town.
The University of Cape Town is deeply saddened by death of Dr Chirevo Kwenda on October 16 in Zimbabwe. Born in 1948 in Charter, Zimbabwe, of a chiefly family, Chirevo Victor Kwenda received the PhD in Religion from Syracuse University in 1993. He joined the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town as a Lecturer (1994-1998), Senior Lecturer (1998-2006), and Head of Department (2002-2004). A brilliant teacher, inspiring supervisor, effective administrator, and valued friend at UCT, he was also a global presence, participating in conferences of the International Network for Interreligious and Intercultural Education in Utrecht, the International Association for the History of Religions in Mexico City, and the meetings on religion and globalization in Farmington, Maine, as well as holding a Mandela Fellowship at Harvard University during 2000-2001. In his publications and conference presentations, Chirevo Kwenda was the master of the revealing phrase—“pedagogy depends on spirals of learning”, “social cohesion depends on cultural justice”, “religion is giving and receiving”, “African traditional religion is deal-making”—that condensed powerful insight and lingered in ongoing reflection and conversation. Chirevo Kwenda is remembered by his colleagues not only for his valuable scholarly contributions but also for being a wise, compassionate and inspiring human being. We hold Chirevo Kwenda in our thoughts along with his wife, Rosemary, their children, and family.
2013
Obituary: CHIREVO VICTOR KWENDA, *1948-†16.10.2013
The African Association for the Study of Religion has learned with great sadness, the passing away on 16 October in Zimbabwe of Dr. Chirevo Victor Kwenda of the University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa. He was Lecturer (1994-1998) and Senior Lecturer (1998-2006) of African traditional religions in the Department of Religious Studies, Head of the Department from 2002 to 2004, and Associate Director of the Institute for Comparative Religion in Southern Africa at the University of Cape Town.
He was born in a chiefly family at Charter near Chivu in Zimbabwe in 1948. He held degrees from the University of South Africa and Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. He obtained his PhD at Syracuse University in 1993: True colors: A critical assessment of Victor Turner’s study of Ndembu religion. Syracuse: Syracuse University, 368 pp.
He argued in this dissertation that Victor Turnerʼs reduction of religion to an expression of beliefs prejudices the study of religion generally, and Ndembu religion in particular. He submitted that this definition of religion allows Turner to abstract Ndembu religion from its historical context and situation under colonial rule, to operate without a coherent theory of the sacred, and to pay no attention to the question of the meaning of world and of the human in the colonial situation. The purpose of this dissertation was to advance a critique of the work of Turner which grounds Ndembu religion in its colonial context, develops a perspective on Ndembu religion as a contact phenomenon, articulates a coherent theory of the sacred and of religious practice as they relate to Ndembu religion and its historical and socio-cultural context, and explores the meaning of world and of human in the political context of colonial Zambia. The significance of his thesis consists in the possibility it suggests of relocating and redefining the problem of religion, of sensing in the religion of contact some rudiments of a colonial discourse. The studies of Turner as well as those of his critics are characteristically cast in the Enlightenment mode of the Human Sciences which, as Charles Long has pointed out, hides and obscures, in the name of scientific objectivity, the ex¬perience and response of colonized cultures, ʻa mode whose adequacy has been undermined by five hundred years of Western domination of other parts of the worldʼ. His thesis was a conscious effort to transcend this foundational disability in the Human Sciences.
At Cape Town, Kwenda specialised in comparative religion, the indigenous religions of Africa and Christianity in Africa. His research focused on the search for an Africa-friendly theory of religion. and ancestral ethics in Southern Africa. Dr. Kwen-da is remembered at UCT as a brilliant teacher, inspiring supervisor, effective administrator, and valued friend. He was also a global presence, participating in conferences of the International Network for Interreligious and Intercultural Education in Utrecht, the International Association for the History of Religions in Mexico City, and the meetings on religion and globalization in Farmington, Maine, as well as holding a Mandela Fellowship at Harvard University during 2000-2001. In his publications and conference presentations, Chirevo Kwenda was the master of the revealing phrase: “pedagogy depends on spirals of learning”, “social cohesion depends on cultural justice”, “religion is giving and receiving”, “African traditional religion is deal-making”. THey condensed powerful insight and lingered in ongoing reflection and conversation. Chirevo Kwenda is remembered by his colleagues not only for his valuable scholarly contributions but also for being a wise, compassionate and inspiring human being.
His publcations include:
Chidester, David, Chirevo Kwenda, Judy Tobler & Darrel Wratten (eds.) 1997, African Traditional Religion in South Africa: An Annotated Bibliography. West¬point [Conn.]: Greenwood, 480 pp., ISBN 978-0-313-30474-3 (0-313-30474-2)
Chidester, David, Chirevo Kwenda, Judy Tobler & Darrel Wratten (eds.) 1997, Christianity in South Africa: An Annotated Bibliography. Westpoint [Conn.]: Green-wood, 504 pp. ISBN 978-0-313-30473-6 (0-313-30473-4)
Kwenda Victor Chirevo 2003, ʻCultural Justice: The Pathway to Reconciliation and Social Cohesionʼ, in David Chidester, Philip Dexter & Wilmot James (eds.) 2003, What Holds Us Together: Social Cohe¬sion in South Africa. Cape Town: HRSC Press, 67-80
2013
Harvard Divinity Bulletin 41, 2&3 (Summer/Autumn 2013)
Harvard Divinity Bulletin 41, 2&3 is devoted to the religions of Africa and its diaspora. Visit http://www.hds.harvard.edu/news-events/harvard-divinity-bulletin on ‘the two-way traffic of the Black Atlantic’: ‘ The contents of this current Bulletin bring home to us how much of Africa survived the Middle Passage and the centuries of degradation that followed. Though we will be forever haunted by the millions of lives destroyed in the process of creating a New World for a privileged few, significant strains in our traditions of music-making, preaching, divinatory and healing practices are traceable to West and Central Africa. Indeed, it is not far-fetched to claim that the Euro-American world is indebted to Africa for its very existence. Yet, while Africa’s vital presence is still felt in contemporary America, so the music, religion, and popular culture that flourished on this side of the Atlantic has found its way back to whence it came, finding expression in the Afropop, Rap, and Reggae you hear on the streets of Freetown, or the “jazz cosmopolitanism” of Accra’ (Michael Jackson’s introduction). It also has an important article by Jacob K. Olupona, and another (on divination) by Phlip M. Peek, two more articles, reviews of books, a documentary film, and Ethiopian liturgical music, and three poems.
2013
IAHR XXI World Congress, Ehrfurt, Germany, 23-29 August, 2015
The Call for Panels and Papers for the XXI IAHR World Congress, on Dynamic of Religions Past and Present, 23-29 August 2015, at Ehrfurt, Germany, has been opened at: http://www.iahr2015.org/iahr/index.html. The deadline for submission of proposals is Sunday, September 14, 2014. Panel and Papers Registration is open now at: http://www.iahr2015.org/iahr-registration/panel-registration.php.