First meeting with future Mediafrica partners in South Africa 2012

In February 2012, we met our future collaborators and partners for the Mediafrica project in South Africa.

Wendy Willems was the organizing hostess of the conference

In february 2012 , the Mediafrica project PI , Jo Helle-Valle, attended the The International Conference 2012 ‘Beyond Normative Approaches: Everyday Media Culture in Africa’ at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The conference brought together an important group of scholars on Africa and spurred engaging and fruitful dialogues. Including Wendy Willems, who at that time worked at the University of Witwatersrand and Katrien Pype from the University of Birmingham. 

Willems was the organizing hostess of the conference and also chaired several of the sessions, 

In the conference paper From face talk to digital mediation Jo Helle-Valle presented his early ideas of the Mediafrica project to a wider audience.  In the same conference Katrien Pype delivered the paper ICT and intergenerational encounters in contemporary Kinshasa: an anthropological perspective on mobile phone technology  and inevitably the contact was established between the future collaborators and partners in the Mediafrica project. 

The conference brought together an important group of scholars on Africa and spurred engaging and fruitful dialogues. 

The International Conference 2012 ‘Beyond Normative Approaches: Everyday Media Culture in Africa’ was arranged 27-29th of February 2012 at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.