The project “Multiscalar gendered temporalities in southeastern African history: Oral voices, lived and inherited pasts, and the deep testimony of time in language” (GENTEMPO-Africa) aims at rethinking change and continuity in the gendered histories of power in Africa from the present to the distant past. It is concerned with writing gendered histories beyond the chronologies and linear sequences that structure and limit our current understanding. Combining research on oral history and word histories, it studies the relation between individual lived time and the longterm and large-scale time of conceptual history. The focus of the project is specifically on the deeper gendered histories of power in present-day Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania in southeastern Africa. Overall, this project proposes that examining different timescales side by side allows for more complex narratives about gender and power in African pasts and presents.

Jonna Katto is the Principal Investigator of this project.

The project is funded by the Research Council of Finland 2023-2027.