Canon Collins Festival 2026: Reimagining Liberation

The Annual Scholars' Conference 2026

---

The Annual Scholars’ Conference brings together over 100 postgraduate and LLB scholars from across southern Africa to connect, collaborate, and strengthen one another’s work.

This year’s theme Reimagining Liberation, is informed by the realities unfolding across Southern Africa, where communities are navigating overlapping challenges that shape everyday life. Climate change, displacement, xenophobia, rising inequality, democratic backsliding, technological transformation, and growing social fragmentation. These challenges do not exist in isolation. They are deeply interconnected, crossing borders, sectors, and generations.

The 2026 Annual Scholars’ Conference invites CCT scholars, alumni, partners, and thought leaders to come together and explore what collective liberation demands in this moment. Grounded in the belief that our futures are intertwined, the conference asks a vital question: If our liberation is bound together, how do we build the futures we need?

This year also marks 50 years since the 1976 Soweto Uprising. The struggle reminds us that liberation is never an individual pursuit but a collective project, forged through solidarity, courage, and a shared vision of a more just future. The legacy of Soweto challenges us to consider how today’s movements for climate justice, migrant rights, democratic renewal, and economic equality can learn from past struggles while imagining new forms of collective liberation.

The Annual Scholars’ Conference is more than a gathering. It is an invitation to connect ideas with action, deepen solidarity across borders and disciplines, and help shape the futures we want to see.

Join us in Johannesburg from 24–26 July 2026 as we reimagine liberation and build the futures we need, together.