PEMM Booth at the African Studies Association Conference

For many academics, scholarly conferences are where you go to present your work to ten people you already know. PEMM decided to try a different format. Instead of hosting a panel or presenting a paper, PEMM used some of its funding to purchase a booth in the exhibit hall of the African Studies Association Conference. We planned to use it to tell scholars about the PEMM website and what its archive of primary sources could do for them. 

This strategy was very successful, with Belcher and Muluneh speaking in depth to dozens of scholars on each of the three days of the conference and handing out about 600 postcards about the project. Those most interested turned out to be scholars who teach Global History or African History courses, and are always looking for free African primary sources in translation and easily accessible with useful metadata.