Global Talk #7: The power of spatial representations of Sub-Saharan Africa

Global Talk #7 was an event organized by the Center for Global Learning at the University of Bayreuth in cooperation with the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence and PLURA – “Project Learning and Resource Platform Africa” – at the University of Bayreuth.

Representations of space/spaces and the people living in them decisively shape which implicit and explicit evaluations and (space-related) actions are derived. Within the framework of the workshop, this constructivist (learning) understanding was drawn attention to against the background of postcolonial theories. It was also visualized using examples from geography lessons. In doing so, the effectiveness of spatial representations of sub-Saharan Africa was explored both theoretically and practically. The spatial concepts of the perceptual space and the space as a construct played a relevant role.
Using teaching situations and material on the subject of "Africa south of the Sahara", subject teachers in particular should be made aware of (linguistic) pitfalls so that they do not unconsciously and unintentionally fall into them. For this reason, the workshop was characterized by joint exercise and reflection phases.

Speaker: Dr. Sonja Schwarze
Dr. Sonja Schwarze is an academic adviser at the Institute for Didactics of Geography at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster and teaches part-time as a teacher at the Marienschule Münster. Her research focuses on the image of Africa in geography lessons and the spatial perception of Africa.