As part of the Lunchtime Seminar Series, the African Centre for Migration & Society invites you to a seminar titled “What futures were they ‘waiting’ for anyway?”: Addis Ababan youth in cultural dissent in the years leading up to the Ethiopian revolution, c.1950s-1974 by Semeneh Ayalew Asfaw (Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University).

In this seminar Asfaw shows how everyday social and cultural performative practices have been formative of political subjecthood for Addis Ababan youth prior to the Ethiopian revolution of 1974. Asfaw attempts to show the linkage between cultural dissent and the making of the Ethiopian revolution through an examination of social and cultural changes in urban space (particularly, Addis Ababa) among the youth between 1950 and 1974.

Biography

Semeneh Ayalew Asfaw is a researcher at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University. He is currently a PhD candidate at University of Cape Town in Political Studies at the Faculty of Humanities Research. He is currently researching for his dissertation project the relationship between urban space, rural-urban migration and social and cultural change among the young and urban in pre-revolution Ethiopia (c.1950s-1974). His research interest includes revolutions, social movements, popular culture and revolutionary terminology. He published and researched on areas ranging from music and social history, political consciousness, the formation of political identities and city making in Ethiopia. His works have historical and spatial focus.

Date: Tuesday 12 March 2019

Time: 12.45 -13.45

Venue: ACMS Seminar Room 2163, South East Wing, Second Floor, Solomon Mahlangu House, University of the Witwatersrand East Campus