Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - 2025 CAAR Conference

The Collegium for African American Research (CAAR) is an international organization of African American and Black Diaspora scholars from over 25 countries, including Germany, Denmark, Spain, Poland, the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Canada, and several countries in Asia and Africa. Members come from a range of disciplines, including literature, history, cultural studies, film studies, social sciences, as well as from queer and gender studies. It was founded at the University of the Sorbonne Nouvelle in 1992 and incorporated at the University of Rome that year.

The membership is made up of higher education educators, students, and individual researchers and activists outside the academy.

To stimulate research in African American and Black Diaspora Studies, CAAR promotes intellectual collaboration through the creation of an international and interdisciplinary research and teaching network.

CAAR organizes bi-annual conferences, sponsors local symposia, helps to create research networks, particularly for younger scholars, and supports publications, most prominently its FORECAAST Series (Forum for European Contributions in African American Studies). Established by a group of European-based scholars heavily indebted to the social movements that led to the creation of Black Studies in the United States, the Collegium sees its purpose in this intellectual and political tradition. Thus, CAAR’s mission remains the production and promotion of knowledge of the Black Diaspora, its interrelatedness with and its effects on our present systems of knowledge (humanities, social sciences, natural sciences), which, traditionally, have failed to incorporate the insights and perspectives of the Black experience.

To carry out its mission, CAAR remains committed to the elaboration of multicultural and antiracist epistemologies by fostering interdisciplinary and transnational academic practices.