Le Temps de la parole with MansA

Olivette Otele is a world-renowned historian, author of African Europeans: An Untold History (2020) and was the first Black woman to be appointed to a professorial chair in History in the UK. She joined SOAS University of London as a Distinguished Research Professor of the Legacies and Memory of Slavery within the Faculty of Law in 2022. She was a judge and chair for several book prizes (International Booker Prize, Orwell Prize, etc.) and a Visiting Chair at the College de France (2023). Professor Otele has published extensively on Colonial History and Memory, the histories of people of African descent and restorative justice. She also advises several governments and institutions on the matter. Her latest publications include 'Comparative Focus on Legacies of Enslavement in the United Kingdom and France' (OUP, 2026) and she is currently editing her monograph on 15 port cities that made empires through slavery (2027). 

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr is a Senegalese novelist, born in Dakar, in 1990. He studied literature and philosophy at the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris. In 2021, Sarr received France’s oldest and most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, for his fourth novel The Most Secret Memory Of Men, becoming the first writer from sub-Saharan Africa to win the prize. In this gripping literary mystery and coming-of-age novel, Sarr unravels the fascinating life of a maligned Black author, based on Yambo Ouologuem. His work is haunted by absent figures and forgotten histories whose voices continue to reach, disturb, and transform the living.

Mame-Fatou Niang is Trustee Professor of French Studies and the Founder-Director of the Center for Black European Studies and the Atlantic at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the author of Identités Françaises (Brill, 2019) and the co-author of Universalisme (Anamosa, 2022). Her recent research examines Black geographies, Blackness in France and the institutionalization of Black Studies Niang is the international curator of the Rio de Janeiro Literary Festival (FLUP), and an artist-in-residence at Ateliers Médicis in Paris, and a fellow at the French Academy in Rome, Villa Medici working on a project entitled “Échoïques” (Sounds of Silence). She is a member of the Black|France|Noire collective and the co-founder of G-SAP, the Global Network for the Studies of Africans and People of African Descent. Mame has held prestigious visiting professorships such as the Melodia Jones Distinguished Chair of French Studies at University at Buffalo, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor in French Studies at Columbia University. She is currently completing two books: a study of Alice Diop and the first French translation of Beatriz Nascimento’s work.

Zana Masombuka, known as the ‘Ndebele Superhero,’ is a South African visual artist based between Johannesburg and her farm in Sterkloop, Mpumalanga. She works across photography, film, sculpture, and performance to explore modernity and our engagement with spirits. Growing up in Siyabuswa, KwaNdebele, she draws on her heritage to create visual narratives with global relevance. A graduate of Stellenbosch University in international studies, Masombuka’s work emphasizes the self-reinvention of African identity. Her platform, ‘Ndebele Superhero,’ reflects the evolving Ndebele culture and the interplay of tradition and modernity. In her solo exhibition Nges’rhodlweni: A Portal for Black Joy at October Gallery, Masombuka celebrated the role of communal spaces in preserving and transmitting cultural knowledge.

Assadiallo Doucouré defines herself as a Black, Muslim, French, Malian, Soninke and Suburban woman from the poor suburbs known as “banlieues”.  She grew up in Clichy-sous-Bois and occupies the 7th place of 9 children, earning her the nickname “Dado”. She is trained as a sociologist, however she took a break from her professional career to “restore, repair and heal her wounds caused by the violence of work and of these worlds”. She took part in the “Echoïques” art project, directed by Mame-Fatou Niang, whose aim was to explore the role of sounds, noises, and silences in the creation of memory fabrics. She is co-president of a feminist and anti-racist association, Lallab, whose aim is to make the voices of Muslim women heard and to defend their rights.