NATIONAL HUMANITIES CONFERENCE (HumanitiesCon2021) July 28-30, 2021
CONFERENCE THEME: Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences Scholarship for a New Era
The historical role of the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences in enacting multifaceted platforms to interrogate and debate the elusive and desirable challenge of humanity and society is self-evident. These disciplines have been critical in the study of individual responsibility, ideal citizenship and polity. By fostering critical thought and debate, they celebrate and interrogate societal commonalities and differences of what constitutes an ideal polity in spite of the numerous challenges and afflictions that are characteristic of human society.
It is unsurprising that the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences have been at the heart of Makerere University’s mandate of knowledge production since the introduction of Social and Historical Studies in the mid-1940s and the East African Institute of Social Research in 1948. This is attested to by the political leaders and eminent scholars that the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences has nurtured and produced over time. They include Julius Nyerere, Milton Obote, Mwai Kibaki, Benjamin Mkapa, Oginga Odinga, Okot p’Bitek, Ali Mazrui, David Rubadiri, Nuruddin Farah, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and John Ruganda, among others. These trained leaders and scholars embraced their generational obligation of delineating the direction of the newly liberated continent.
