Friday 28 March, 13.00 to 17.00
Ravensteijnzaal (1.06), Kromme Nieuwegracht 80, 3512 HM Utrecht

This intensive seminar will explore the interplay between translation, categorisation, and religion through a discussion with anthropologist Iracema Dulley and multidisciplinary artist and researcher Sela Kodjo Adjei. Drawing from case studies in colonial and postcolonial Angola and Ghana, the seminar will examine how translation and naming practices shape religious and social concepts, transformation, and power relations.

We will start with a light lunch and then hear presentations by the two speakers. After a 15-minute break, we will have a general discussion.

Iracema Dulley is an anthropologist based at the University of Lisbon, who researches processes of differentiation and subject constitution through historical, linguistic, and ethnographic work in central Angola. She has worked extensively on Catholic and Protestant missionary translations. Among her publications, we suggest pre-reading the following:
-the chapter “Feitiço/Umbanda”, published in the book Changing Theory: Concepts from the Global South (2022), available here
-the article “Naming Others: Translation and Subject Constitution in the Central Highlands of Angola (1926-1961).” Comparative Studies in Society and History 64, no. 2 (2022): 363–93. available here

Sela Kodjo Adjei is a multidisciplinary artist and lecturer at Ghana’s University of Media, Arts and Communication, Institute of Film and Television. He is part of the Legba Dzoka Project, and has been involved in the research of the collection gathered by a German missionary among the Ewe-speaking people in today’s South-Eastern Ghana and Southern Togo, focusing on anthropological and museum classifications and exploring the past trajectories of this collections and its possible futures.