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The AHUWA-Unilever Sponsored African Archives Collaborative Research Project 

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July 13, 2023
Africa, AHUWA, British Colonial Architecture, Ghana, Heritage, Historiography, Nigeria, United Africa Company
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The AHUWA-Unilever Sponsored African Archives Collaborative Research Project 

Two days were spent on Merseyside at the Unilever Archive and then at the University of Liverpool with senior research historian colleagues from the Universities of Ghana and Lagos in Western Africa. Professor Sam Ntewusu, head of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, and Professor Ayo Olukoju, of the Institute of African and Diaspora Studies at the University of Lagos.

Iain Jackson, Ola Uduku, Ayo Olukoju, Claire Tunstall, Sam Ntewusu at Unilever, Port Sunlight

The objective of the visit was to visit and introduce Profs Olukoju and Ntewusu to the Unilever archive collection at Port Sunlight, particularly its subsidiary the United Africa Company’ (UAC)’s extensive holdings on Western Africa covering its various business interests in the region. The symposium which took place the next day involved presentations by Profs Olukoju and Ntewusu on the state of archives and archival research in West Africa, which was attended by Merseyside researchers and PhD students.

 

Professors Olukoju and Ntewusu at Unilever, Port Sunlight with bust of William Lever

The two-day visit also enabled discussions to be had about future collaborations at various levels, research, knowledge exchange capacity building at Masters degree level, and forms of impact for institutions in Western Africa and also the the UK and NW England in particular. Our thanks to all who contributed to the symposium. Particularly Claire Tunstall, and her team at the Unilever Archives, Dr Abraham Ng’an’ga of the Andrew Walls Centre, Liverpool Hope University, Alex Buchanan, Archival Studies, University of Liverpool History Department, Suzie Goligher, Afrograph Ltd, and all other individual and institutional contributors to the symposium. 

MoU signed by the University of Liverpool’s APVC for the Faculty of Humanities Professor Fiona Beveridge, and received by Professor Olukoju, on behalf of the University of Lagos

The visit also coincided with the finalised signing off of the Memorandum of Understanding which has now been established between the University of Liverpool and the University of Lagos. The formal MoU, was signed by the University of Liverpool’s APVC for the Faculty of Humanities Professor Fiona Beveridge, and received by Professor Olukoju, on behalf of the University of Lagos

Ola Uduku

Referentially: Towards a Decentred Future

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July 10, 2023
Africa, AHUWA, Heritage, Historiography, MoHoA
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Adefola Toye writes:

Referentially: Towards a Decentred Future (https://mohoa.org/events/referentiality-towards-a-decentred-future/ ) was a one-day public event at the Bartlett School of Architecture organized by MoHoA (The Modern Heritage of Anthropocene- (https://mohoa.org/ ) and sponsored by the AHRC.

The event interrogated approaches that challenged the mainstream colonial, nationalist and social-cultural frameworks in architecture, art and heritage management scholarship and practice. It included discussions, talks and activities with a diverse range of speakers whose creative production explore approaches free from referential relationship with inequitable power structures.

A research conversation moderated by Edward Denison, Ievgenia Gubkina, Emily Mann and Shahid Vawda comprised speakers from multidisciplinary fields of research and practice with case studies from Africa, Asia and Europe. The speakers included Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow, Dr. Alistair Cartwright and PhD researcher, Adefola Toye – both from Liverpool School of Architecture. Each speaker discussed the limitations they encounter when engaging mainstream sources for scholarship and research-in-practice which erases the agency of populations under study. Furthermore, they shared how they addressed this using participatory action research, public engagement, multidisciplinary methods and utilising crowdsourced open-access archives.

1. Image 1 by Edward Denison

2. Alistair Cartwright Presenting, by Edward Denison

The session concluded with talks from African heritage organizations, including the Direction du Patrimoine Culturel du Sénégal, Swahilipot Hub, and the University of Cape Town. They discussed existing and future initiatives for sustainable and inclusive heritage management on the continent. These included exhibitions, training workshops, public engagement tailored to different age groups and professions, and collaboration with local and global heritage partners.

Afterwards, a student-centered lunchtime activity with architect Sumayya Vally and BSA design tutor Jhono Bennett, explored referentiality in architectural research and practice through co-production and drawings based on the participants insights and experiences.

Image 3 by Adefola Toye

The remainder of the event was spent in conversations with notable speakers in the fields of architecture, art and curatorial practice.

Nana Ocran, founder and Editor of the People’s Stories Project, hosted discussions with multidisciplinary artists Christopher Samuel and Valerie Asiimwe Amani. They explained how their creative works use archives materials to create awareness about the underrepresentation of people with disabilities and colonial subjects.

Performers Peter Brathwaite and Kenneth Olumuyiwa Tharp examine ‘Rediscovering Black Portraiture’s use of domestic material culture to reimagine the historical image of black subjects as well as professional engagement with diverse art and culture foundations in the UK.

Image 4 by Adefola Toye

Architect, Sumayya Vally, and curator, Ekow Eshun also discussed the event’s theme in relation to their recent works: Asiat-Darse Project (Belgium) & the Islamic Arts Biennale (Saudi Arabia), and In the Black Fantastic (UK) & The Time is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure respectively.

Tofa Jaxx and guitarist Leon King closed the evening with a musical performance.

Adefolatomiwa.Toye@liverpool.ac.uk

Seminar: The African Archive Experience; Challenges in Archival Curation and Archival-Based Research Work in West Africa

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July 7, 2023
Africa, AHUWA, Ghana, Global Architecture, Heritage, Historiography, transnational, Tropical Architecture, United Africa Company
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THE AFRICAN ARCHIVAL EXPERIENCE 

CHALLENGES IN ARCHIVAL CURATION AND ARCHIVAL-BASED RESEARCH WORK IN WEST AFRICA 

12.30pm Tuesday 11th July 2023

Room G.04 Liverpool School of Architecture Building, Abercromby Square, Liverpool

Zoom Link: Contact ijackson@liverpool.ac.uk for the link

Abstract:

We are delighted to be able to host Professor Ayo Olukoju (Institute of African and Diaspora studies, University of Lagos) and Professor Sam Ntewusu (Institute of African Studies University of Ghana) who are visiting the University of Liverpool and also the Unilever Archives to explore the possibilities of future collaborative research and teaching activities across our institutions and others in NW England.

Both Professors are historians who have worked with archival sources in their research in West Africa. They have generously agreed to share, through this seminar, the challenges and issues with working with archival material and sources from a West African perspective and also some of the hopes they have for future collaborations.

Do join us to hear their views and also join the conversation – how do we make the most of archives in the 21st century in different locations and places? Importantly do we need to decolonise the archive, and if so how?  

All Welcome: 

A sandwich lunch will be provided at Room G.04

Professor Ola Uduku

Co-director AHUWA Research Centre 

Hosted by the AHUWA Research centre  in association with Unilever Archives, School of History and Institutes of African Studies and African Diaspora Studies  at the University of Ghana, and the University of Lagos

Transnational Architecture Group is Ten Years Old

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March 12, 2023
Africa, AHUWA, British Colonial Architecture, Ghana, Heritage, Historiography, India, Middle East, Migration, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, transnational, Tropical Architecture, United Africa Company
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The Transnational Architecture Group is 10 year’s old this year. Thank you for supporting the blog and to all of our excellent contributors over the years for enriching the content and generously sharing their work. We’d also like to thank the communities in the places in which we work, the archivists and librarians for making material available to us and sharing their expertise, our respective institutions for supporting our research, and to the research funders who make travel, time, and resources available to us.

The blog started as a means to share our work-in-progress ideas and to promote events – and that is still at the core of what we do. We continue to add updates from our ventures into the archives, travel reports, and to share interesting events and innovative papers. These small reports and updates have compounded into something of a large resource and repository, and we’re delighted so many people have been able to make good use of (and to correct and expand upon) our work and attempts at writing these histories.

To celebrate the 10 year anniversary we held a small gathering at the Liverpool School of Architecture on Wednesday 8th March, curated and organised by Dr Alistair Cartwright. Our speakers were all PhD students, post-doctoral researchers, and research associates at the school. You may watch the proceedings here:

https://stream.liv.ac.uk/fkzj2h9j

The speakers and titles of the presentations are below, with timings if you’d like to skip to a particular talk:

Rixt Woudstra, “Sapele and Samreboi: Building Company Towns in British West Africa” 5:25

Excy Hansda, “Indigenous Modernities in the Twentieth Century Architecture of Bombay” 20:00

Adefola Toye, “Tropical Modernism in Nigeria’s First Universities: Accessing Sources Beyond the Archives.” 37:00

Ewan Harrison, “Planning for Post/Neo Coloniality: the Paramount Hotel in Freetown” 1:11

Iain Jackson, “Erhabor Emokae and the curious case of the UAC Mural: tropical modernism and decorative arts” 1:31

Daneel Starr, “How and why has the vernacular architecture and intangible cultural heritage of the Akha people changed in the face of globalization: Using the village of A Lu Lao Zhai, Xishuangbanna (sipsongpanna) China, as a case study.” 1:50

Paul Robinson, “Freetown, the UAC and urban design” 2:20

Alistair Cartwright, “Ecologies of Vulnerability: Post-Cyclone Reconstruction in Mauritius, c. 1945” 2:35

We also heard an excellent paper from Razan Simbawa, “The Effects of Demolish-based Urban Regeneration on Displaced Residents in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia” – which cannot be shared on the video recording at the moment.

Thank you again to all of the speakers for their wonderful talks, presentations, and work-in-progress. There was such variety and richness in the topics and methods, and at the same time numerous connections and cross-overs between the work.

Please do get in touch if you’d like to know more, or to share your work on the blog.

AHUWA LAUNCH  13TH DECEMBER 2022

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December 19, 2022
Africa, AHUWA, Heritage
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AHUWA LAUNCH  13TH DECEMBER 2022

The Architectural History and Urbanism Research centre for Western Africa, AHUWA, was launched on Tuesday 13th December at the School of the Arts at the University of Liverpool. The launch involved a presentation of the research centre by the co-directors Professors Iain Jackson and Ola Uduku, about the key research themes, aims and ambitions of the AHUWA research centre followed by a short networking session over refreshments during the event. In attendance were invited members of the Liverpool university faculty and departments who had interests or links to West African Architecture and Urbanism history research, members of the local Liverpool community with African links, and a number of Architecture staff and post-graduate students. We were also pleased to welcome a representative from the Andrew Walls Centre from Liverpool Hope University and a host of academics who logged in online from the UK, West Africa, the USA and farther afield.

The key themes which AHUWA will focus on are:

  • Architectural and Urban History
  • West African Coastal Heritage
  • Sustainable and Healthy Cities   [SDGs 11 and
  • Research outreach and collaboration via
    • Trans-national university collaborations
    • Writing workshops
    • Public outreach and engagement activities

Our aims and objectives are:

  • To be a repository and hub to consult for links to researchers and research collections pertaining to West Africa in North West England
  • To host and develop links with researchers in the North West of England and West Africa in order to promote future collaborative research links
  • Ultimately and importantly  to strengthen research networks and institutions in West Africa through their collaboration with UK institutions from PG research and teaching  opportunities to the collaboration and co-production of major research consultancy, and other potential outputs.

We are working in association with several collaborators including:

  • UCL and UCT (Modernist Heritage of Africa Project)
  • ACRC (University of Manchester) – the African Cities Research Consortium
  • DOCOMOMO International. (Shared Heritage Project)
  • ASAUK –  Curating the proceedings and publication of the Online  ASAUK Biennial conference 2022
  • UNILEVER – on the United Africa Company archive

We are in the process of undertaking the following:

  • Setting up MoU’s and working relations with colleagues at the IADS University of Lagos and  IAAS University of Ghana, Legon.
  • Production of the first AHUWA newsletter in March/April 2023
  • Establishing links with the School of Architecture, Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone
  • Undertaking scoping research in Freetown Sierra Leone
  • Working towards developing collaborative research grants within the scope of AHUWA’s research thematic areas.

Best wishes for Christmas and 2023.