Call for papers - Thematic Issue – 2/2025

Africa and the World: Interaction, Connection and Change

Submission Deadline: June 15, 2025
Publication Date: December 22, 2025
Issue language: English

Africa’s historical, cultural, and political interactions with the wider world – especially with its diasporas – have long shaped how African identities are formed, expressed, contested, and reimagined. As the continent continues to assert its presence on the global stage – through cultural production, economic partnerships, technological innovation, and political engagement – there is a growing need to rethink the relational dynamics between Africa and the world in both historical and contemporary terms.

This thematic issue invites scholarly contributions that explore Africa’s global circulations and reciprocal influences, past and present, as well as those that critically examine Africa’s representation and agency across transnational and diasporic contexts. We encourage submissions that engage with Africa as a central actor in shaping global cultural, artistic, and political dialogues – rather than a peripheral or reactive entity.

We propose the framework of relationality and circulation (as theorized by Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic, Édouard Glissant’s poetics of relation, and contemporary debates on decoloniality and global South epistemologies) as a productive lens for thinking through African and diasporic experiences. These paradigms allow us to trace connections across geographies and temporalities – mapping routes of exchange, displacement, creativity, and resistance.

We welcome theoretical interventions, comparative studies, empirical research, and interdisciplinary approaches. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Cultural exchange and circulation: art, music, dance, literature, and fashion
• African futures in global cultural markets
• Migration, mobility, and the transformation of African identities
• Decolonial aesthetics and the afterlives of colonialism
• Soft power, cultural diplomacy, and Africa’s global visibility
• Art repatriation and the restitution of cultural heritage
• Africa–Diaspora relations: historical legacies and contemporary collaborations
• Root tourism, heritage politics, and memory-making in African and diasporic contexts
• Receptions and adaptations of European literary and cultural forms in African contexts
• Black Atlantic networks and intellectual traditions
• Ecology, extractivism, and environmental justice in Africa and the diaspora
• Human rights, gender, and LGBTQ+ experiences
• Africa and AI: technology, innovation, and digital futures

We also encourage submissions that push the boundaries of these themes or offer unexpected perspectives on Africa’s multifaceted position within global cultural and political formations.

Submission Information:

• Deadline for full articles: June 15, 2025
• Notification of acceptance: July 20, 2025
• Expected publication: December 22, 2025
• Articles should be submitted to:
  jakub.kosciolek@uj.edu.pl
  e.binczycka-gacek@uj.edu.pl
  (Please, submit to both addresses)
• Editorial guidelines will be shared upon request or can be found on the journal’s website:
  https://journals.akademicka.pl/relacje/about/submissions

We look forward to receiving your contributions and to collectively rethinking Africa’s global position and cultural vitality.