MEMOrients Conference

In the context of wider postcolonial and decolonial shifts that have occurred in both critical and popular thought over the past decades, we have seen growing interests in recovering and recentering histories of Islamic civilizations and their shaping influence on knowledge, systems, and technologies that we now associate with the modern world. Whether recognized as the powerful authorities that transformed trade, belief, politics, science, and art in the premodern world, or as the ‘other’ necessary for Western colonial self-fashioning, as per Edward Said’s formative theorization of them in Orientalism, there is no denying that Muslims and Islamicate societies hold a fundamental place in our (global) past. Traditions, representations, and experiences of encounters between Muslims and their non-Muslim counterparts in the ‘West’ –or the Global South and Global North respectively – have long been and remain a fundamental site of excavation for this history.

Since its launch in 2019, Medieval and Early Modern Orients (MEMOs) has aimed to collaboratively and ethically explore and disseminate these narratives of the past. The events that we have witnessed over the past year are a stark reminder of the urgency of continuing this work, in efforts to decolonize the way Muslim identities and histories are perceived in contemporary thought. With this in mind, MEMOs is delighted to host its first hybrid conference to be held from the 11th - 14th of December 2025, in person in Cape Town, South Africa, and online.