Welcome to our data visualization link page. This visualization has been produced with the input of members of the Afro-Asian Networks team*. It maps the major conferences of the Afro-Asian era in the 1950s and 1960s, including locations, delegates, delegate biographies, and country of origin. Conferences covered include:
1947 The Asian Relations Conference, Delhi (ARC)
1949 Asian Women’s Conference, Beijing (AWC)
1952 The Asia-Pacific Peace Conference, Beijing (APC)
1953 The Asian Socialist Conference, Rangoon (ARC)
1955 The Asia-Africa Conference, Bandung (AAC)
1957 The Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organisation Conference, Cairo (AAPSO)
1958 The Afro-Asian Writers’ Conference, Tashkent (AAWC)
1958 The All-Africa People’s Conference, Accra (AAPC)
1960 The Second Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference, Conakry (AAPSO2)
1961 The Afro-Asian Women’s Conference, Cairo (AAWO)
1966 The First Afro-Asian-Latin American People’s Solidarity Conference or Tricontinental (TRI)
Click here to access the visualisation
Click here for a short introductory video on the visualisation’s main features by Rachel Leow.
Using the Visualisation
At the bottom of the map you will find a bar with acronyms for each conference. Clicking on the acronym will bring up a visualization of the conference’s location and lines indicating where conference participants travelled from to attend. Event information on the conference will be on right-side panel. Clicking on the line for a country (eg. Indonesia) will bring up a list of attendees on the right-side panel under ‘Attend’. Clicking on the name of the attendee will bring up any available biographical information.
Note: country names in this period of decolonisation and state-making are in flux. As such, we have used contemporary UN nomenclature to designate countries of origin of the participants. Names of official delegations at each conference – ie. the way delegates represented themselves – will be found in the ‘Role’ section of the ‘Bio’ tab for each person.
Methodology and Request for Information
We have based this visualization on data collected from official conference handbooks and reports. Delegate lists are not complete reflections of those who were at the conference, so where possible we have also included data from observers who we know were there through their own accounts, as in the case of the Bandung conference, where attendance of journalists and observers far outweighed the official delegate list.
We would be very grateful for input from other researchers who see missing names on these lists, or can provide biographical information about participants, along with any available sources for this information. We are also looking for conference delegate lists for other events related to Afro-Asian solidarity in this era, including the Afro-Asian Journalists’ Conference and the Afro-Asian Lawyers’ Conference.
We welcome your feedback!
We’d love to hear from educators, researchers, and the wider public on:
- Has this visualisation had any impact on your understanding of the period, or your approach to teaching decolonisation?
- How might we develop this further?
- In what ways might this be useful to you?
- Would you or would you know anyone who might want to partner with us to develop this further?
Please drop us an email at afroasiannetworks@gmail.com
* Contributors include members of the research team (Reem Abou El-Fadl, Philmon Girmai, Leslie James, Hannah Jansen, Rachel Leow, Su Lin Lewis, Carolien Stolte, and Ali Raza) as well as other researchers who have generously given their time, input, and resources: Rossen Djagalov, Rob Skinner, Wildan Sena Utama, Lasse Lassen, and Kyaw Zaw Win. We are very grateful to our student interns – Amber Mitchell (Bristol), Marieke Dwarswaard (Leiden), and Olivia Beatson (Bristol) – who have helped with data entry and clean-up.
** This visualisation was designed primarily by Rachel Leow, along with Su Lin Lewis and Carolien Stolte, in partnership with Tarim at Pervasive Media Studio with the initial funding from the University of Bristol’s Brigstow Institute , as well as additional funding from the Faculty of Arts , the Jean Golding Institute, and the Centre for Black Humanities.