The Institute of African Worlds (IMAF)

The Institute of African Worlds (IMAF) is a joint interdisciplinary research unit (ancient and contemporary history, anthropology, political science, archaeology) whose work focuses on Africa, both north and south of the Sahara, and on its diasporas throughout the world. A laboratory that brings together researchers around a cultural area, IMAF is made up for the vast majority of anthropologists and historians. It was created on January 1, 2014, through the merger of three laboratories: the Center for African World Studies (CEMAf), the Center for African Studies (CEAf), and the Center for the Social History of Mediterranean Islam (CHSIM).

The Institute of African Worlds (IMAF) was born on January 1, 2014 from the merger of three laboratories: the Center for African Worlds Studies (CEMAf), the Center for African Studies (CEAf), and the Center for the Social History of Mediterranean Islam (CHSIM).

It was established on four sites (Aix-en-Provence, Ivry-sur-Seine, rue Malher (Paris IVe) and bd Raspail (Paris VIe), until the consolidation of the three sites in the Paris region on the Condorcet campus (Aubervilliers) in September 2019.

Research

It is a joint interdisciplinary research unit (history, art history, anthropology, political science, history of law, archaeology, geography) whose research on the entire African continent or its diasporas is organized around six axes:

• Production and circulation of knowledge
• Political economies and African globalization in the long term
• Powers, spaces, temporalities and uses of the past
• The spaces of religion: genealogies, textualities, materialities
• Art, a political object
• Gender, bodies, subjectivities

Tutelage

IMAF is under the authority of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS – UMR 8171), the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD – UMR 243), the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and the Aix-Marseille Université (AMU).

Staff

• 28 CNRS researchers
• 8 IRD researchers
• 3 emeritus CNRS researchers
• 25 research professors
• 4 emeritus research professors
• 4 ITA CNRS
• 5 BIATTS
• 28 retired researchers and teacher-researchers
• 23 affiliated researchers
• 9 post-doctoral students
• 13 young PhDs
• 58 associate researchers and teacher-researchers