Indigenous Values and Social Change: Conference of the Institute of Global Value Inquiry (IGVI)

The Institute of Global Value Inquiry (IGVI), in collaboration with the Centre for Gender, Diversity and Social Inclusion at the University of Business and Integrated Development Studies (UBIDS), will hold its second annual conference in Wa, Ghana, from 7 to 9 September 2026. Under the theme Indigenous Values and Social Change, the conference will bring together more than forty scholars from fifteen countries and a wide range of disciplines.

GloPhi director Prof. Dr. Anke Graness, who also serves as a director of IGVI, will participate in the conference and join Prof. Constance A. Akurugu in delivering the concluding remarks.

The conference examines how Indigenous values, philosophies, epistemologies, and practices persist and change in a world shaped by rapid globalisation and the enduring effects of enslavement, colonialism, imperialism, and religious imposition. Rather than treating indigeneity as a static inheritance, the conference asks how technological, environmental, political, social, and economic transformations reconfigure Indigenous traditions—and how these traditions might themselves provide intellectual and ethical resources for constructive social change.

The programme approaches these questions from multiple regional and disciplinary perspectives. Panels will address Indigenous knowledge systems in a plural world, environmental and political values, relationality and digitalisation, social and economic inequalities, folklore and performance, youth empowerment, and the role of Indigenous values in contemporary debates about justice and social transformation.

A central strand of the conference is devoted to the sub-theme African Feminism(s) and Indigenous Values in a Precarious Global Women’s Movement. Against the background of declining support for research and advocacy on gender equality, increasingly regressive policy environments, renewed anti-rights mobilisation, and persistent patriarchal structures, participants will consider how African feminist thought and activism can engage critically with Indigenous philosophies and value systems. The discussions will explore their potential as resources for feminist agency, well-being, rights, empowerment, and epistemic justice, while also examining tensions between relational ethics, gendered hierarchies, and global frameworks of gender equality.

Keynote Lectures

• Prof. David Millar (Millar Open University, Ghana): Ancestorcentrism, Totems, and Social Change: The Dagara Paradigms of Life
• Prof. Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí (Stony Brook University, USA): Meditations on Endogeneity: Gender, Culture and Identity in Africa’s Quest for Social Transformation
• Prof. Sylvia Bawa (York University, Canada): (Re)Centering Epistemic Logics of the Future: Dismantling Disempowerment through African Value Systems

Event Details

Conference: Indigenous Values and Social Change
Dates: 7–9 September 2026
Location: Wa, Ghana
Format: Hybrid, with online participation via Microsoft Teams
Organized by: Institute of Global Value Inquiry, in collaboration with the Centre for Gender, Diversity and Social Inclusion at UBIDS

Further information is available on the conference website. The complete conference programme is also available online.

Registration

Online attendance is free and open to all. To register and receive the Microsoft Teams link, please contact Dr. Kristonyo Honya at kristonyohonya[at]gmail.com. The registration email should include your title, if applicable, institutional affiliation, and geographical location.