CFP

[Aribiah Attoe]

CfP: 4^th International Classics Conference in Ghana (ICCG)

Classics at the Crossroads

University of Ghana, Legon

3–4 September 2026

Over the past decade, significant strides have been made to rethink Classics beyond its traditional boundaries. Collaborative initiatives such as Global Classics and Africa, Classics Beyond Borders, the Africa World Initiative, and Classics at the Crossroads have sought to reimagine the discipline as more inclusive, globally engaged, and responsive to diverse intellectual traditions. At the same time, ongoing conversations around decolonization, restitution, curriculum reform, language pedagogy, and the place of Classics in contemporary education continue to challenge and reshape the field. What does it mean to practice Classics in a global and interconnected world? In what ways can Classics contribute to broader conversations in the humanities and beyond? We invite papers from scholars in Classics and related disciplines (including archaeology, history, literature, religion, philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, art history, performing arts) as well as from those working in interdisciplinary and comparative frameworks.

Sub-themes (not exhaustive):

•        Cross-cultural reception and reinterpretation of antiquity

•        Collaboration, partnership, and knowledge production 

•        Pedagogy, curriculum development, and language teaching

•        Digital Classics and AI

•        Archives, museums, restitution, and material culture

•        Race, ethnicity, and identity

•        Gender, sexuality, and marginalized voices

•        Migration, mobility, and cosmopolitanism

•        Politics, democracy, and public discourse

•        Environment, ecology, and sustainability 

•        Classics, the humanities and STEM

•        Public Classics and community engagement

•        Decolonizing Classics

•        Globalizing methodologies in Classical studies

•        Histories and historiographies

•        Africa and the Classics

Submission Guidelines:

•        Abstracts should be no more than 200 words and should be submitted via:

https://forms.gle/ojWtfYTHjijxRHL6A

•        Papers will be 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion

        •     Deadline for submission: 15 May 2026

•        Notification of acceptance: 30 May 2026

•        Deadline for conference registration: 31 July 2026

Conference Fee

The conference fee, which includes conference materials as well as breakfast and lunch on both days, is $100 ($50 for students). Participants are responsible for arranging their own travel and accommodation.

Dinner and Excursion

The conference dinner will take place on Thursday, 3 September (7:00pm), and an excursion to the Shai Hills Resource Reserve on Saturday, 5 September (7:00am). At the previous conference, each cost approximately $50, and we do not anticipate a significant increase.

Special Event: A Mock Retrial of Socrates 

A mock retrial of Socrates in a Ghanaian legal context, featuring qualified legal practitioners and a jury, will be held on the evening of Friday, 4 September at the University of Ghana. The event is open to the public and is supported by the Ancient Worlds, Modern Communities initiative of the Society for Classical Studies.

Bursaries

Thanks to the generous support of our funders, we are pleased to offer travel bursaries to participants from African institutions and conference fee waivers to student presenters who are unsuccessful in securing funding from their home institutions. Further details will be provided after the abstract submission deadline.

Please direct enquiries to Gifty Etornam Katahena (gekat...@ug.edu.gh) or Michael Okyere Asante (mo...@cam.ac.uk). 

Organising Committee: Peter Grant (Cape Coast), Gifty Etornam Katahena (Ghana), Hendrik Lorenz (Princeton), Michael Okyere Asante (Cambridge/UESD), Stephen Oppong Peprah (Ghana), Luke Roman (Memorial), Frisbee Sheffield (Cambridge)

The conference is co-sponsored by the Classics Beyond Borders initiative, Faculty of Classics,

University of Cambridge with support of the Leventis Foundation; Princeton University’s Africa World Initiative; and the Classics at the Crossroads project funded by the SSHRC (Canada). 

Aribiah David Attoe, PhD

ORCID No.: 0000-0001-9786-1824

Department of Philosophy

University of Witwatersrand, South Africa

Member, The Conversational School of Philosophy, Calabar, Nigeria

Co-author: New Conversations on the Problem of Identity, Consciousness and Mind (Springer, 2019)

Guest Editor: "Special Issue on African Conceptions of the Meaning of Life", South African Journal of Philosophy (2020)

Author: Groundwork for a New Kind of African Metaphysics: The Idea of Predeterministic Historicity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
Co-recipient: John Templeton Fund, via the Global Philosophy of Religion Project Grant, University of Birmingham.

IEP Entry: https://iep.utm.edu/afr-mean/

Co-Guest Editor: Special Issue on "Shifting Perspectives on Contemporary African Philosophy of Religion", Religious Studies (2022).

Co-Guest Editor: Special Issue on "African Perspectives on God, the Problem of Evil and Meaning in Life", Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religion (2022).

Editor: African Perspectives on the Question of Life's Meaning (Routledge, 2023)
Co-editor: Conversations on African Philosophy of Mind, Consciousness and Artificial Intelligence (Springer)

Author: The Question of Life's Meaning: An African Perspective (Palgrave)