mat Workshop 2025

SECOND  INTERNATIONAL “MAT CONFERENCE 2025”

“Intersecting Sub-Saharan Africa, 1450–1700. Trade, Conquest, Missions, Enslavement”
Rome, Sapienza Università di Roma, 30–31 January 2025

This conference, organised at the beginning of the second year of the project, was intended to position the MaT project within the international interdisciplinary debate on Africa during the period between 1450 and 1700. The conference explored the multiple interactions between Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe in the early modern period, addressing themes such as missionary perspectives, trans-African Islamic networks, and the role of Ethiopia in the circulation of knowledge, highlighting the presence of a plurality of “Africas.”

The panels also examined early representations and classifications of Africa within a global context, as well as the dynamics of slavery and the relationships between trade, power, and religion. Particular attention was devoted to linguistic and cultural interactions, knowledge production, and material and visual exchanges between Africa and Europe. In this way, the conference brought to light the complexity of processes of contact, mediation, and cultural translation between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The event:

gathered 26 scholars from 9 different countries;

engaged scholars from different disciplines—historians, linguists, and art historians;

explored in greater depth one of the two foci of the project, namely Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Book of Abstracts, registered on Zenodo  (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14655808) is available in open access via the project portal, ensured immediate digital dissemination and long-term accessibility

Editorial Outputs

A selection of papers from the conference will be published in the forthcoming edited open access volume: Cattaneo, Angelo, and Simone Celani (eds), Intersecting Sub-Saharan Africa (1450–1700); currently under contract with CNR Edizioni and Sapienza University Press (Series Bridges) (forthcoming 2027)