Solo Debut: Part I

 7 min. read

(c) Andrei Stratu

During the first days of my PhD - which does not seem long ago at all - my supervisor, Brigitta recommends I submit a paper for an annual postcolonial conference in Germany, known as GAPS.  Most of the research team is encouraged to do the same. My supervisor would not be in attendance, so if my abstract were accepted, it would be my first time flying solo at an academic conference. (I’ve previously co-presented a paper with Brigitta). The May 2025 iteration of the GAPS is about the challenges neoliberalism poses for the discipline(s) of Postcolonialism. I appreciate the overtly political angle. It would allow me to position my paper with unapologetic ideological frankness. However, I don’t feel confident enough to make a fully-fledged submission. To my mind, I’m the rookie of the research team; less seasoned than some of my colleagues. Or rather, I’ve been away from academia the longest. I therefore submit an abstract as part of the Under Construction panel.  Irony will have it that not only do the conference organisers ask me to present a full paper, mine is the only abstract from my research team that GAPS immediately accepts.

Beyond the significance of presenting a paper for the first time on my own, the GAPS conference will also coincide with the end of my first PhD year. It’s gone fast. Scarily so. My supervisor is already talking about ideal monograph submission deadlines. The months leading up to GAPS are fraught with pressures without and within; negotiating my own anxious tendencies as well as Brigitta’s high and often confusing expectations.

GAPS will be the first in a run of conferences for which I have successfully submitted abstracts. I’m surprised. I applied for several, not expecting to receive a positive response for all.  Between late spring and mid-autumn, preparing for conferences will preoccupy much of my time. The beauty of it is that this preparation allows me to work simultaneously on my thesis. In addition to the feedback from other academics in attendance, writing a paper helps me formulate my ideas in a sequence. I have been writing stray portions - or vignettes, as Brigitta calls them - but preparing my paper obligates me to be a lot more structured. Whatever isn’t used in my intervention can be repurposed for other papers as well as fleshed out into future chapters. 

The initial draft of my GAPS presentation is at least twice as long as the 20 minute allocated speaking time. With the help of Brigitta and my life coach, Pieter, I whittle it down but I’m still running over. I make my peace with the chance of being cut off part-way. Whatever remains is important. There’s only so much I can ‘kill my darlings’, as one of my colleagues would put it.

The conference is held in Bielefeld, a city so apparently non-descript that some German friends tell me of a running joke amongst compatriots: that the place doesn’t really exist. The gag is also mentioned at the conference, when one of the organisers reads an article about Bielefeld's bland reputation from a major US journal. Admittedly, I’d have never heard of the city but for GAPS.  I book my train ticket well in advance and initially regret it when the conference programme becomes available. Nothing of import really takes place well into the first day - Ascension Day - so I could have travelled that morning. However, on arriving I appreciate the wisdom of giving myself an extra day to settle in. My DeutschBahn trains run slightly behind time, although not as bad as what I’ve heard of late. That cliché of German clockwork efficiency has been severely called into question after years, if not decades, of infrastructural underinvestment.

Bielefeld, Germany (c) Tobias Bennett

For my outbound journey, I have no assigned seating which is trickier to negotiate than I could have anticipated. After having to shift seats several times, I end up sitting next to Marcus; an Anglo-Irishman. He is also on his way to a conference in Germany; the far more glamorous Berlin. It turns out to be a providential encounter. Marcus has a high position in a well-known left-of-centre publishing house. I spot him reading a collection of the writings of Amílcar Cabral and the approbation is out of my mouth before I can stop myself. It turns out that we’re taking the same connecting train from Cologne. We lose each other making the switch. Our paths cross again when Marcus is on the way to the onboard café and I’m left to improvise a seat in the wide passageway, after being turfed out of my temporarily occupied priority seat by a train guard to make room for an elderly couple.

It’s otherwise a stress free trip. Once I work out where to pick up my tram, it’s a straightforward ride to my slick and well-rated accommodation - the waiting time notwithstanding. To my surprise Bielefeld is a proper city; not the sleepy, quasi-rural set-up I expect from all the bad press. A few hours after arriving at my Airbnb, I meet the owner. He plays Lounge and smooth Bossa Nova music loudly on his speakers. It's getting late but it's not so bad. He has good taste.

Bizarrely enough, the conference is scheduled on a public holiday. I knew that France and Belgium acknowledged Ascension Day but I thought it was just a Catholic thing and that Germany, apart from the papist South, would treat it as a regular working day. Apparently, it’s a holiday for much of mainland Europe.

I arrive at the conference in time for registration and a light veggie lunch. I see at least one familiar face, Dr. Johann Larsberg who was a keynote speaker at a conference which I helped to co-organise at the University back in Brussels last December. I’m a conduit of salutations on Brigitta’s behalf for Johann and fellow professors and conference organisers, Penelope and Deedee, that I’m yet to meet offline.

At times like these, I’m grateful to be socially autonomous. Networking isn’t a chore. Damilola, one of only two other black women at the conference, makes a beeline for me during a break and doesn’t hide her motivation. That kind of solidarity is indispensable in these spaces. I extend it to the Black folk I see on the streets of Bielefeld. For a small city, where some locals still look at me with curiosity, I'm surprised how many Black families I see.

After hesitating to confirm my attendance at the conference dinner too far in advance, I gladly join the cohort that evening for the self-paid event at a restaurant in town.  The environs reverberate with EDM. Some techno festival in the area, apparently. Very stereotypical.

I meet some impressive young academics, Sally and Raphael - or Raphs - also engaged in the Palestine struggle. I identify them from their keffiyahs. I’ve decided to leave mine in my suitcase until the second day of the conference, when I’ll be presenting. I’ve heard anti-Palestine sentiment can be crazy in Germany. I don’t know if I’ll be half-choked by someone trying to snatch the keffiyah from my neck - although I should be willing to take the risk. 

Sally is German and Raphs is Austro-Ecuadorian. I’m keen to hear what it’s like organising for Palestine in Germanic spaces. Both of them are eager to hear how serious GAPS are about their postcolonial commitments. Sally takes the opportunity to bring up Palestine after the first keynote speech - a controversial critique of postcolonial and decolonial theories that engenders lively discussion. The keynote speaker that afternoon joins us via Zoom. She's stuck in the US after being advised not to leave the country, in the wake of recent draconian migration policies; not the only participant at the conference in that position. She unequivocally supports Sally's argument that no serious discussion about postcolonialism can ignore the plight of Palestine.

(c) Jamie Lopes

Sally isn’t otherwise impressed by what she’s observed so far; biased public statements and an unwillingness to discuss Gaza at the hours’ long AGM (which I skipped) earlier that day. There’s a promise that the issue will be raised at the roundtable discussion at the end of the first official conference day. It’s not. Not really. Speakers tip-toe around the topic so much as to practically avoid the subject altogether. The chair of the discussion, Josie, is supportive of the Palestinian cause. She and I speak after one of the earlier sessions. Josie explains the painful journey she’s made as a German to uncouple the collective guilt over the Holocaust from Justice for Palestine.

As the roundtable moderator, Josie tries to diplomatically angle the conversation in that direction but to no avail. I’m debating about whether to address one of the speakers’ comments about Holocaust exceptionalism but in this context, I wonder if I’m the best person to take her up on it. Afterwards, in private, Raphs argues that it’s often left to racialised people to speak up in these spaces. We shouldn’t always feel the burden when there are others in the room who are perfectly capable of raising their voices. Sally leaves immediately after the roundtable, visibly irate. Disillusioned by the conference, Raphs says he doesn’t envisage coming again.  

On the day of my presentation, I’m tired but in good spirits. The talks I’ve attended have been stimulating, particularly the Q&A’s. They expose the gap (no pun intended) in my own knowledge of post and decolonial theories. I always say I’m in academia but I’m not an ‘innate’ academic. Some of my layperson framing of these ideas come from activist spaces. I’m a little confused, for example, when a keynote speaker accuses the post and de-colonial disciplines of ignoring Marxist analysis. That’s not the impression I get from the grassroots, where at least critiques of capitalism are implicit to anti-imperialist organising.

One recurring observation from various interventions is that these conversations can’t remain self-indulgent academic preoccupations. We need to translate these into real world change.

Part II