Keynotes

The keynote speeches will be streamed via video conference. To participate, please send an email to: afroeuropecyberspace@uni-bremen.de

Keynote 1, 17 June 2026, 10 am

Francesca Sobande (Cardiff University):
(Post-)Digital Diasporic Forecasts and Futures

The generative notion of “digital diaspora” (Anna Everett 2009) has been theorised and analysed in a wide range of insightful ways that particularly tend to Black life and histories. Accounting for how digital technology and online platforms are implicated in diasporic experiences, “digital diaspora” is a term that has been turned away from as well as being embraced. How might the related concept of “(post-)digital diaspora” help us to grapple with the current digital and socio-political landscape – from the intensified impact of “artificial intelligence” (AI) and changing networked platforms, to the normalisation of documenting local, national, and international atrocities and solidarities on social media? What might be gained, lost, or remixed by shifting a focus away from the lens of “digital diaspora” and toward engaging with the challenges and possibilities presented by the idea of “post-digital diasporic forecasts and futures”? Does the “post-” in such a concept refer to a time after the digital or the diaspora as “we” know it, and why does the distinction matter? Guided by these questions, this session reflects on the recent history of digital diasporic realities, ruptures, and imaginaries, while considering what may lie ahead.

Reference
Everett, Anna (2009) Digital Diaspora: A Race for Cyberspace. Albany: SUNY Press.

Dr Francesca Sobande is a writer and reader in digital media studies at Cardiff University (Wales/Cymru). Her books include The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), Consuming Crisis (SAGE, 2022), and Big Brands Are Watching You (University of California Press, 2024). Francesca is also co-author of Look, Don’t Touch: Reflections on the Freedom to Feel (404 Ink, 2025) and Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland (Bloomsbury, 2022), as well as the free self-published graphic novel, Black Oot Here: Dreams O Us (2023). Her most recent writing includes the free self-published zine, Black Life in / and "Alt" Music Subcultures (2025), in addition to essays on “Echoes: Soft Space and Solidarity in the Legacy of Hardcore Punk” (Folding Rock), “She Burns: The Heat of Black Women in Blues and Punk” (Shuddhashar) and “The Inhale and Exhale of Art” (Shuddhashar). Francesca is currently working on a self-published comic, Balsamic Night, and an illustrated poetry collection, Haar.

Keynote 2, 18 June 2026, 9:30 am

Mayra Santos-Febres (Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto Río Piedras)
Fractal Afro-Poetics: Afrodiasporic Writing Practices in the Afroeuropecyberspace

This talk departs from a historical perspective that establishes 400 years of independent maroon AfroDiasporic cultures in the Caribbean and Latin America, creating parallel African societies within the outskirts of European colonization and slavery. At the same time, it re-reads the production of 200 years of literary production of Afro Latin American and Afro Caribbean Literatures taking into consideration how cyberspace creates a supra national exchange of literary traditions that defies traditional ways of reading and producing literature. According to this historical panorama, how should we read AfroDiasporic literary cannons? I propose to read it in a supranational, maroon way, going beyond the fragmented national readings of afrocentered literature, in dialogue with contemporary African literatures and emphasizing the fractality of our literary and critical understanding of our cultural and literary productions in the age of Afroeuropecyberspace.

Mayra Santos-Febres was born in Carolina, Puerto Rico, in 1966. She studied literature at the University of Puerto Rico and holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University. She has been a visiting scholar at Rutgers (1992), Cornell (1994) and Harvard University (2004) as well as Complutense University in Spain (2013), Autonomous University of México, at Yucatán campus (2008) and Leipzing University in Holland (2005). She co-created the Creative Writing Program for the University of Puerto Rico, and founded and directed The Word/ Festival de la Palabra, the most internationally recognized Literary Festival in Puerto Rico (2010-2009). Mayra Santos-Febres is currently the Principal Investigator for the development of University of Puerto Rico’s Afro Diasporic and Racial Studies Research Center, which has been recently awarded with a Mellon Foundation second grant for academic diversification. She was recently named a resident writer-artist at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus. As a writer, Mayra Santos-Febres has won many international prizes and recognition, such as the Letras de Oro Award (Spain, 1994) the Radio France Juan Rulfo Award (1998), the Premio Primavera Award, Spain (2006) for her novel Nuestra Señora de la Noche and the John S. Simmon Guggenheim Fellowship (2015) as well as the Rockefeller Bellagio Center Residency (2018). Her literary work has been translated into French, English, Italian, Rumanian, Korean, Portuguese and Islandic. She has published the poetry collections Anamú y manigua (1990), El orden escapado (1991), Boat People (1994), Tercer Mundo (2004), Lecciones de renuncia (2021), Huracanada (2018). Her publications in short story include Pez de vidrio y otros cuentos, El cuerpo correcto, Un pasado posible y Mujeres violentas. She has also published the novels Sirena Selena vestida de pena (2001), Cualquier miércoles soy tuya (2002), Fe en disfraz (2009), Nuestra Señora de la noche (2006) y La amante de Gardel (2015) and the essay Tratado de Medicina Natural para Hombres Melancólicos (2011) y Sobre piel y papel. In 2019, she won the Prix Nationale de Litterature de l’Academie de Pharmacie in Paris, France for La amante de Gardel. Her latest book, La Otra Julia (2024), is a novel that won the John S. Guggenheim Fellowship.