Ethiopian Voices Against Slavery at the 22nd International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (ICES22)

AFRAB’s Panel: Ethiopian Voices Against Slavery at the 22nd International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (ICES22), Hawassa University, 29 September – 3 October 2025

The AFRAB panel Ethiopian Voices Against Slavery, convened by Takele Merid (Addis Ababa University) and Alexander Meckelburg (University College London), brought together six presentations exploring how Ethiopians have articulated, institutionalised, and reimagined abolition from the early twentieth century to the present. The session was held on 1 October 2025 as part of ICES22.

After introducing the panel’s themes and the background of the AFRAB project, Alexander Meckelburg traced the transition from anti-slavery activism to modern humanitarianism between 1920 and 1960, showing how Ethiopian reformers and state actors redirected abolitionist discourse toward child welfare and education through institutions such as the Love and Service Association. Takele Merid examined the role of the Bərhanənna Sälam newspaper as a key instrument of institutionalised abolitionism in the 1920s and 1930s, highlighting how the press, alongside the Slave Manumission Office and philanthropic associations, helped formalise anti-slavery policies.

Ahmed Hassen presented new research on the market site of Bulloworkie near Däbrä Bərhan, reconstructing its dual function as both a major slave market and, later, a site for public readings of royal edicts on emancipation, drawing on oral traditions and manuscript sources. Nicola Camilleri explored the biographies of enslaved men who became colonial soldiers (ascaris) in Italian East Africa, linking their personal trajectories to broader questions of emancipation through military service. Lacy Feigh analysed early twentieth-century Ethiopian historical paintings, arguing that depictions of imperial expansion and the Battle of Adwa illuminate how Ethiopian artists and intellectuals negotiated the visual memory of slavery and national belonging. Finally, Oljira Tujuba examined the post-1942 anti-slavery campaign in Wallaga, demonstrating how abolition was unevenly implemented through local administrative networks and how central directives translated—often imperfectly—into regional realities.

Together, the papers illustrated the depth and diversity of Ethiopian engagements with slavery and abolition, from local activism and print culture to art, archives, and memory, thus demonstrating that the struggle against slavery was central to Ethiopia’s modern political and moral imagination.

On 2 October, the Ethiopian AFRAB team held a book launch for the newly published Slavery and the Slave Trade in Ethiopian Studies (Aethiopica Supplement, Harrassowitz, 2025)

The volume features the work of several AFRAB-Ethiopia team members and affiliated researchers, bringing together new studies on slavery, source materials, and post-slavery transformations in Ethiopian history.