A Luta Continua! Symposium: Marking the 50th Anniversary of African Liberation from Portuguese Rule
Date and Time
A Luta Continua! Symposium - Marking the 50th Anniversary of African Liberation from Portuguese Rule
Schedule
- Pre-Symposium Event: Film Screening of Sambizanga.
- Directed by Sarah Maldoror, this film explores the Angolan War of Independence. Maldoror’s daughter, Henda Ducados, will be in attendance to discuss the film
- Time & Location: October 23rd 6pm. Room 114 of the Barker Center (the Kresge Foundation Room) 12 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA 02138
- A Luta Continua Symposium:
- October 24th - October 25th
- Day 1 Morning Location: Harvard Center for African Studies, 1280 Massachusetts Ave, 3rd Floor
- Day 1 Afternoon Location: CGIS South, Tsai Auditorium - 1730 Cambridge St, Concourse Level
- Day 2 Location: Harvard Center for African Studies, 1280 Massachusetts Ave, 3rd Floor
- October 24th - October 25th
Full details and program can be found here
We are delighted to welcome you to A Luta Continua!, a two-day symposium to bring together scholars and practitioners engaged in work across Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé & Príncipe, and their diasporas. 2025 commemorates the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Africa from Portuguese colonial rule, a liberation hard-fought after more than a decade of anti-colonial warfare. Over the next two days, we will situate and connect the liberation struggles and their aftermath across Lusophone Africa, while also connecting them to broader African freedom struggles, global processes of decolonization, the Cold War, and other international political transformations of the past fifty years.
We are opening the symposium with a pedagogical workshop, as our scholarship cannot be disconnected from the ongoing practice of teaching, community, and civic work that many of us are involved in. We will then follow this up with a day and a half of panels as well as a keynote roundtable. A Luta Continua asks us to think critically about the challenges of the last half-century and of the decades to come. The five countries liberated in the mid-1970s have undergone a variety of political, economic, social, and cultural transformations since independence, and we will explore those in both an African and global context.
We look forward to you joining us in Cambridge and the many conversations this week and in the months and years to follow!