Incompleteness and the ethics of new and emerging health technologies: fostering African conversations on relational ontology, epistemic justice and academic activism

In this project, we propose to create opportunities for African theory- building by fostering critical reflection, exchange of knowledge and perspectives, and collaboration and writing between African scholars from different disciplines, with a focus on exploring how African thought could influence critical engagement with the ethics of new and emerging health technologies globally.

Starting with a recognition of incompleteness and the conviviality that requires, the focus of this project will be on a) developing conceptual accounts of how African thought could inform on key ethical questions raised by new and emerging health technologies, b) better understanding how we can ensure epistemic justice in our scholarship and which diversity matters; and c) understanding how particular African research contexts drive us towards academic activism.

The programme seeks to create opportunities for exchange and joint reflection, in an aim to push the audacity with which African scholars can take ownership of, and lead, reflection on the ethics of new and emerging health technologies.

The programme will dive into questions relating to African personhood, relational autonomy, epistemic justice and academic activism to explore how African ways of seeing and being in the world could enrich global conversations about science and technology.