06 July 2016 Volume :4 Issue :30
Academic to Further Research in International Law as a Harvard Resident Fellow
Mr Chris Gevers.School of Law Lecturer Mr Christopher Gevers has been awarded the Institute for Global Law and Policy Fellowship allowing him to spend a year at Harvard University in the United States to further his research into the intellectual history of Pan-Africanism and International Law.
The Fellowship is awarded to scholars whose work is challenging, original and focuses on progressive and alternative ideas within International Law.
Gevers aims to use the opportunity to continue his study which begins in 1900 at the first Pan-African Conference and institutionally traces this project through the five subsequent Pan-African Congresses and culminates in the formation by African states of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963.
The study focuses on Pan-African intellectuals such as William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Kwame Nkrumah - who lived, thought and wrote, together at times, internationally.
‘The aims of the project are threefold,’ said Gevers. ‘First, it aims to explore how Pan-African internationalism converged institutionally and intellectually at various points with the projects of 20th century international law. Not only did Du Bois, Azikiwe and others at times draw on international law, but they also participated in and influenced debates about how to order and re-order the world through law in times of “crisis”.
‘Secondly, it aims to explore how Pan-African scholars tried to re-imagine the world in utopian terms, but their “freedom dreams” were often pursued in languages (international law), forms (the nation state) and practices (elitism, expertise) of that present,’ he said.
‘My aim is to consider how these choices revealed commitments, and involved costs, that ultimately challenged or undermined the project of Pan-Africanism: such as the adoption of an unreconstructed, Eurocentric view of history; the reduction of “colonial emancipation to national liberation” through the state-form; and the downplaying of the “significance of race and racism as fundamental organising principles of international politics”.
‘Thirdly, I am interested in exploring how this history resonates with contemporary debates about the present global order, and Africa’s role in it.’
Apart from his study, Gevers is also working on projects concerning: International Law, Colonialism and the Novel in Africa; The Cold War and International Law; Teaching International Law Critically in South Africa, and Critical Approaches to Legal Education.
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