Annual ASnA Conference 2026

Welcome to the Faculty of Humanities, to Sol Plaatje University (SPU), to Kimberley and the Northern Cape.

The Anthropology Department in the Faculty of Humanities at Sol Plaatje University (SPU) will host the Anthropology Southern Africa (ASnA) Conference from 25 to 27 August 2026 in Kimberley. The conference is organised in collaboration with the ASnA Council and forms part of an ongoing commitment to convene critical and engaged anthropological scholarship in Southern Africa.

The theme for the 2026 conference is “Anthropology Otherwise?”. This theme emerges from the Northern Cape’s layered histories of colonialism, apartheid, and extraction, alongside the presence of Indigenous knowledge systems, African epistemes, and plural ways of being that continue to shape the region. In this context, “otherwise” signals an openness to multiple ways of knowing, doing, and relating that exceed singular or fixed definitions of anthropology. Rather than resolving these tensions, the conference embraces them, creating space for diverse theoretical, methodological, and ethical approaches to sit alongside one another. The theme therefore invites participants to rethink anthropology’s conceptual vocabularies, methodological practices, and ethical commitments from the vantage point of Southern Africa’s complex and generative worlds.

The conference will feature keynote addresses by Dr Hylton White (University of the Witwatersrand) and Prof Nokuthula Hlabangane (University of South Africa), whose work speaks to questions of social theory, decolonial practice, and the reimagining of anthropological knowledge.

In addition to traditional paper presentations, the conference will include roundtables, performances, exhibitions, posters, and experimental formats, alongside heritage engagements in Kimberley and opportunities for collaboration with local artistic and community practices. A conference dinner will provide further space for collegial interaction and networking among attendees.