โUrban Nodes & Narratives on Dansoman, Adabraka & Madinaโ
โ โฏAs part of โฏโ ACCRAโone50, โ โฏthe Foundation for Contemporary ArtโGhana, in collaboration with [Applied] Foreign Affairs, presents a public panel discussion on Acupuncturing Accra โ a metropolitan-scale artistic research, mapping and archiving project exploring three urban nodes in Adabraka, Dansoman and Madina.
Call for Papers: Beyond Colonial Narratives: Methods for Studying Colonial Built Environments in the Global South
Date: 9th December 2026 Location: School Of The Arts Old Library, University of Liverpool, Abercromby Square
The Heritage Institute at the University of Liverpool are pleased to announce a PGR Conference on Colonial and Postcolonial Architectural History, to take place at the University of Liverpool, 09 December 2026. The conference is an excellent opportunity for postgraduate research students and graduates to present papers and receive critical feedback from peers and experts in the field.
Conference theme/scope
Recent scholarship on colonial architecture and planning in the Global South has increasingly examined the politics of colonial power, imperial narratives, and their enduring legacies in the built environment.
Such studies have moved beyond simplistic centre-periphery models to explore how local actors engaged with, contested, appropriated, and redefined colonial projects in domestic, infrastructural, and urban contexts.
Methodologically, such works have drawn on approaches ranging from reading against the grain of colonial archives to examining non-official records and period literature that better represent the experiences of colonial societies. Scholars have also turned to alternative sources like oral histories, social practices, visual and material culture, and media to recover the voices and experiences of colonial subjects that are often absent from official archives.
This conference aims to further explore the diverse methodologies available for studying colonial built environments beyond colonial narratives and perspectives. It seeks to expand existing historiography by focusing on contributors who remain marginal or obscured within conventional architectural and planning histories, such as local professionals, artisans, labourers/workers, and inhabitants.
More broadly, the conference invites reflections on how approaches from architecture, urban planning, history, social sciences, and the humanities can deepen our understanding of the relationships between colonial administrations and local societies.
We invite paper proposals from postgraduate students working on Colonial and Postcolonial Architectural History, broadly defined. Of particular interest are papers that employ primary sources and non-traditional methodologies. We particularly welcome contributions that:
Focus on local professionals, artisans, labourers/workers, and inhabitants and other contributors who remain marginal or obscured within conventional architectural and planning histories.
Reflect on how methodological approaches from architecture, urban planning, history, social sciences, and the humanities can deepen our understanding of the relationships between colonial administrations and local societies.
Reveal processes of negotiation, adaptation, resistance, and collaboration between colonial and local authorities and building professionals, labourers/artisans, and everyday users of built environments.
Apply archival records produced by colonial subjects and non-state actors, as well as ethnography, oral history, participatory research, and critical analyses of popular culture, media, and material practices.
We encourage potential participants to interpret these themes broadly. Presentations should be made for 10-minute presentations. We especially welcome submissions from speakers with limited conference experience.
To be considered, each prospective participant should submit a 250-word abstract to heritage@liverpool.ac.uk by 23rd September 2026
11-13 February 2026 Fundaรงรฃo Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbonโ
After questioningย Architecture, Cities and Infrastructureย (2019) andย Architecture, Colonialism and Warย (2023), the third edition of theย Colonial and Post-colonial Landscapes Congressย (2026) will intersect the topics ofย Architecture, Colonialism and Labour.: https://www.archlabour.com/cpcl-2026
Although a common topic in colonial historiography, the influence of large-scale labor on the creation of built environmentsโincluding the design, construction, and maintenance of infrastructure, buildings and landscapesโhas not been fully explored in the context of colonial architecture. The topic has significant implications not only for the description of past societies, but especially for the comprehension and support of present-day communities with colonial pasts and their relationship to the production of space. Connecting architecture and labor in these contexts offers a promising avenue for addressing some of the challenges encountered by postcolonial societies. These include the relationship with “Western” construction technologies and materials, scarcity of traditional building systems and their undervalued insights on climate adaptation and sustainable solutions, and persistent racial and gender inequalities in public works labor environments.
This congress welcomes contributions from diverse geographical, disciplinary, and chronological backgrounds to promote a wide and tough-provoking debate, crossing the history of colonial architecture, labour and social history and construction technology.
Liverpool School of Architecture, at the University of Liverpool and the Program in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology of the Johns Hopkins University invite proposals for a hybrid symposium to be held in Liverpool from the 17-18 April 2025.
Pathology Labs, Korle Bu Hospital, Accra, c1958
We welcome presentations that explore various settings for health and healing, such as shrines, sacred healing huts, and herbal ‘apothecaries’ and other spaces for indigenous medicine and healing practices; โbasicโ health care infrastructure incorporating dispensaries, clinics, and hospitals developed for early missionary and colonial medicine; post-independence medical centres. We are also interested in papers examining the use of healthcare โvectorsโ such as barefoot doctors, travelling midwives and paramedics and their spread of health care practices such as vaccinations, and childhood nutrition programmes in urban and rural areas.
We are interested in the settings for full range of medical specialisms from paediatrics to psychiatry and also more contemporary physical design responses to contemporary pandemics such as Ebola and Covid. Evidence and records of mixtures of indigenous and western healthcare practices in some community settings and the emergence and involvement of teaching hospitals in healthcare planning is also of interest.
Other possible topics include the role of military hospitals, colonial and modern, and contemporary healthcare infrastructure and provisions for displaced persons and refugees. We encourage interdisciplinary approaches–history of medicine, medical anthropology and sociology, oral history, among others.
Our area of interest is the African continent, from the โMEANAโ countries of the maghreb, north of the Sahara, to all countries South of the Kalahari and East and West of the Sahara. Health and healing facilities on islands in proximity to main continental mass such as Zanzibar, Mauritius, Fernando Po and Cape Verde are also of unique interest.
We are seeking to publish selected outputs from the symposium in a volume currently under negotiation with the publisher. We welcome abstracts (500 words max) and short CVs (1page) Please also indicate whether you intend to deliver your paper in person or online. For more information please contactย Ola Udukuย o.uduku@liverpool.ac.uk or Bill Leslie,ย swleslie@jhu.edu
A visit to Venice to attend the inaugural AFRAHUAN session at the Teatro Piccolo at the Arsenale as part of the Carnivale Proceedings of the Venice Biennale proved an apt occasion to visit and view Venice in full exhibition and tourist mode.
Venice is indeed a city like no other. No cars, no bicycles, lots of passageways, canals, and tourists. One adjusts to this city of walkers, traders and tourists all jostling for space in alleyways that are literally not wide enough to swing a cat. The green canal water both enticing and goading the unwary walker to come to its banks.
Arsenale Arriving in Venice at night
A walk to the Arsenale gave a better viewpoint of the wide vista of Venice as a series of islands with canals as fingers out to the grand canal. The adaptive reuse of various parts of this still living city is clear. The Arsenale itself remains the home of the Italian navy and a museum dedicated to the armed force still exists with the occasional boat dropping by.
The main part of the old Arsenale building however now has been occupied by the architecture biennale, this year curated by Lesley Lokko and involving your writer and a wide set of architects, writers and artistes with Africa focused research. The โcarnivaleโ exhibition is no mean feat, a work of immense dedication, creativity and focus. The curation is superb and content more than can be taken in at one go. One easily gets immersed in what it offers up with names one knows and has heard of contributing to this rich tapestry of art. Fortunately the accompanying catalogue means one can refer back to installations and events missed or glossed over in the viewing of the exhibition.
AFRAUHN AT THE CARNIVALEโฆ
The African Architectural and Urban History Network (AFRAUHN) had its debut at a session at the Carnivale at the Biennale. Curator Lesley Lokko introduced our session which had two parts, the first involved speakers Ikem Okoye (Delaware, USA),ย Kuukuwa Manful (Michigan University, USA) and Neal Shasore (London School of Architecture), with Ola Uduku (Liverpool University) chairing, where the session focused on a discussion on the remit of AFRAUHN which is to help encourage and advocate for Architectural Research in Africa, and support new generations of indigenous historians and researchers in Architectural History and urbanism. After Ikem Okoyeโs introduction both Kuukuwa and Neal were able to discuss their different approaches to, and hopes for Africa-related Architectural Research.
AFRAUHN Session [Courtesy of Venice Biennale]Lesley Lokko Introducing the AFRAUHN Session [Courtesy of Venice Biennale]
The second session chaired by Huda Tayob (Unversity of Manchester) involved all speakers from the earlier session and also Murray Fraser (University College London). This session was a roundtable where the speakers responded to Huda Tayobโs questions which considered specific issues and challenges to scholarship in African Architectural History and its situatedness within the wider context of global research and challenging normative notions of historical research and scholarship.
AFRAUHN 2nd Session [Courtesy of Venice Bienale]AFRAUHN 2nd Session [Courtesy of Venice Bienale]
The entire session was recorded and will be published by the Venice Architecture Biennale before the end of September 2023. Due to the events related to air traffic control problems in the UK unfortunately several of the invited AFRAUHN team were unable to attend the session, and others arrived late due to flight delays. It is hoped we will be able to include their recorded contributions to the final video output from the session.
IUAV (University of Venice)
On Wednesday, the day after the Carnivale discussion we were fortunate to reconvene at a meeting room at the IUAV (University of Venice), thanks to Dr Jacopo Galli, who has researched into African modernism and was involved in the curation of the exhibition Africa Big Change, in Milan and has worked with Manchester School of Architecture on the analysis of schools in West Africa. IUAV has sites across Venice, and we met at the Cโa Tron campus, a Venetian villa owned by the wealthy Tron Family before being gifted to the State.ย Post meeting tours took us to the Carlo Scarpa-influenced main campus of the IUAV, a repurposed convent which still has parts which are owned by the church. The campus also has a significant architectural library including book volumes and periodicals accessible and in regular use by its students.ย ย
IUAV
Unlike the exclusive arrival to the watery city a few days earlier, the trip back to the airport was by airport water taxi, which proved to be a bus trip stopping at many of the archipelago of islands which constitute Venice, including Murano, famous for its glass works and San Michael. Approaching Marco Polo Airport Venice by water seemed a very apt way to leave the city.
Call for participation Journรฉe d’รฉtude sur l’architecture et l’urbanisme au Maroc aprรจs l’indรฉpendance (1956-1986) 20th February 2024, Centre Jacques Berque, Rabat Deadline (french or english): 30th September 2023
The newly established Rรฉseau de recherche sur l’histoire de l’architecture au Maroc – RHAM (rham.hypotheses.org) launches a call for participation to the Symposium: ‘L’architecture et l’urbanisme au Maroc aprรจs l’indรฉpendance (1956-1986). Trajectoires d’acteurs et circulations de savoirs’.
“Cette journรฉe d’รฉtude se concentre sur une pรฉriode spรฉcifique de l’histoire du Maroc : les trois dรฉcennies qui ont suivi l’indรฉpendance du Maroc, de 1956 ร 1986. Cette pรฉriode, qui demeure encore largement sous-explorรฉe au regard de la littรฉrature produite sur la pรฉriode coloniale, suscite dรฉsormais un intรฉrรชt croissant. Fort de ce constat, la premiรจre journรฉe dโรฉtude du RHAM vise ร faire se croiser et se rencontrer ces diffรฉrentes maniรจres dโaborder lโhistoire de lโarchitecture, du paysage, de lโurbanisme et de lโamรฉnagement du territoire au lendemain de lโindรฉpendance, en mettant en รฉvidence des matรฉriaux de recherche inรฉdits“
For more info, see the call for participation here.
Recent years have seen an upsurge of academic, curatorial and critical interest in postwar art in Britain and around the world. This has included addressing the question of how we define what โpostwarโ is and how expansively we might think about the period and its cultural significance. This series of Paul Mellon Centre research seminars will showcase new perspectives on the arts of postwar Britain as an interdisciplinary and transcultural terrain of research. Talks in the series engage with the issues of empire and worldmaking, with questions of migration, the environment and with the intersections of art, technology and new media.
The sixth and last in a series of summer research seminars onย The Arts of Postwar Britain 1945โ1965ย with Iain Jackson and Rixt Woudstra.ย 13th July 2022, 6pm-7.30pm, Paul Mellon Centre
25 May to 13 July 2022
A series of summer research seminars to be held on Wednesdays from May to July 2022
Paul Mellon Centre [online and in person]
Iain Jackson โ Modern Architecture in West Africa: Schools, Sculptures and Magazines
This paper is concerned with modernist architecture in โBritish West Africaโ produced in the aftermath of World War Two and the independence period of these countries.
These experimental and often provocative structures were designed for climatic comfort, as well as becoming didactic vehicles for ideas sharing ideas of a modern and liberated Africa.
The paper will discuss attempts at forming a โBauhausโ Art School in Accra, followed by various commissions of libraries, community centres and museums that attempted to blend the most radical architectural designs with decoration, murals and sculptures. The West African context seemingly presented a โblank canvasโ for newly qualified architects eager to โexperimentโ in ways that would be impossible in Britain. Whilst these buildings were often presented as symbols of an emerging nationalism and expectation of liberation, they also reveal the ongoing neo-colonial methods, with many relying on the patronage of multinationals such as the United Africa Company.
Finally, the paper will discuss how these projects were reported and shared, especially through the high-brow magazine Nigeria, which regularly featured extensive articles written by the architects on the latest designs.
The result was a diverse and extremely fertile context that reveals an often-overlooked set of important structures responding to a period of political flux and cultural exchange.
Rixt Woudstra โ โA feeling of warmthโ: Tropical Timber, Modern Interiors and the United Africa Company in Postwar Britain
In 1960, the new, modernist headquarters of the United Africa Company (UAC), one of the leading British trading businesses extracting palm oil, cocoa and other raw goods from West Africa since the late nineteenth century, opened near Blackfriars Bridge in central London. While the structureโs grey concrete and glass exterior appeared cold, inside the architects used a strikingly large variety of gleaming tropical timbers. The doors, floors and panelling, as well as most of the furniture, were made of honey-coloured idigbo, pinkish makore, fine-textured guarea, reddish-brown sapele and deep-brown African mahogany โ all logged by one of the companyโs subsidiaries, the African Timber and Plywood Company, in Nigeria and Ghana. Although an exceptional example, it was certainly not the only building containing exotic timbers in postwar Britain; tropical wood could be seen in and on the outside of university building, civic centres, housing estates, sport facilities and offices.
Scholars have explored how Jamaican and Honduran mahogany, sourced by enslaved workers, left an imprint on British domestic interiors and furniture design in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century. Less well known, however, is that โempire timberโ โ and later, โworld woodsโ โ continued to permeate British design and interior architecture well into the twentieth century. This talk focuses on the commercial activities of the UAC in Nigeria and Ghana during the 1950s and โ60s and considers how tropical timber was deployed to soften or provide a decorative element to modernism, often perceived as cold and austere. Moreover, examining tropical timber and tracing where and by whom it was logged, how it was processed, sawn, shipped and sold, enables us to see how British postwar modernism was dependent on imperial and neo-imperial networks of extraction and colonial labour.
โArchival Urgeโ is the second part of the symposium โDocument Feverโ organised by the Architectural Association in collaboration with the Architecture Space & Society Centre, Birkbeck School ofย Artsย on 25 February 2022. This time in partnership with KNUST, this panel aims to celebrate three projects that โcollectโ histories of architecture in very different ways. We will think, amongst other questions, about the archival impulse/fever that made these projects coincide in time and space; the archival need to collect histories that are missing in architectural history; and the diverse formats of archive-making that these projects have taken or are taking.ย ย
Adil Dalbaiย Adil graduated from Humboldt University of Berlin with a masterโs degree in modern history and cultural theory, specializing in the architectural history of Eurasia and (post)colonial contexts. He worked as an editor and author for DOM publishers, focusing on architecture and urbanism. He went on to study architecture at the Technical University of Berlin and worked at Meuser Architekten on architecture projects in Western Africa. He researches and writes about architecture in Central Asia and Africa and its global interconnections. Additionally, he is a guest critic and lecturer, as well as (co)editor and author of several articles and books on architecture, including Theorising Architecture in Sub-Saharan Africa (DOM publishers, 2021). Since 2014, he has been managing editorial director of Architectural Guide Sub-Saharan Africa (DOM publishers, 2021, with Philipp Meuser and Livingstone Mukasa), a sevenโvolume documentation of the architecture of all 49 African countries south of the Sahara.ย
Kuukuwa Manfulย Kuukuwa is a Doctoral Researcher at the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS, University of London. Her research examines the sociopolitics of West African nation-building and citizenship through a study of the architecture of educational institutions. She has a Master of Architecture and a BSc Architecture degree from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), and an MSc in African Studies from The University of Oxford. Her previous research has explored the positioning of Ghanaian architects in the modernist movement; Asante architectural identity; and social acceptance of earth building in urban areas. She has published inย Al Jazeera,ย Burning House Press,ย Africa Is A Country,ย andย The Metropole. Kuukuwa curates Adansisษmโ an architecture collective that documents Ghanaian architecture theory, research and practice, and runs accra archiveโ an architecture archives digitisation project. She also co-founded and runs sociarchiโ a social architectural enterprise that advocates for, and provides architectural services to people who ordinarily cannot afford architects.
Philipp Meuser Born 1969, Managing director of Meuser Architekten GmbH and head of DOM publishers. From 1991 to 1995, studied architecture at the Berlin Technical University. From 1995 to 1996, editorial work for the Neue Zรผrcher Zeitung, Switzerland. Part-time postgraduate studies in the History and Theory of Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zรผrich), graduating in 1997. PhD on the Soviet Mass Housing (Berlin Technical University, 2015). Federal Cross of Merit for cultural and scientific exchange with the states of the former Soviet Union (2018). From 1996 to 2001, policy advisor to the Senate Department for Urban Development as part of the Stadtforum Berlin. Visiting Professorship at the Kazakh National Technical University, Almaty (2015). Tutor at the Strelka Institute Moscow (2016/2017) and the Architectural Association London (Easter Island Visiting School 2017). Since 2018 Honorary Professorship at the O.M. Beketov National University of Urban Economy in Kharkiv, Ukraine. 2022 Visiting Professor for Public Humantities at Brown University in Providence/Rhode Island.ย
Livingstone Mukasa Livingstone Mukasaโs career has included architectural practice, urban design, master planning, real estate development, and sustainable development consulting. He founded and managed Archability, an online architectural crowdsourcing start-up, and Afritecture, an online platform on architecture in Africa. He is currently principal of Mahali, a collaborative design studio focused on cultural and contextual architectural engagement, and a frequent guest reviewer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Instituteโs School of Architecture. Passionate about architecture in Africa, he is coauthor and associate editor ofย Theorising Architecture in Sub-Saharan Africaย (DOM publishers, 2021), andย Architectural Guide Sub-Saharan Africaย (DOM publishers, 2021, with Philipp Meuser and Adil Dalbai), a sevenโvolume documentation of the architecture of all 49 countries south of the Sahara. Born in Kampala, Uganda, he holds a bachelorโs degree in Architecture from New York Institute of Technology, and graduate certificates from the Graduate School of Architecture, Harvard University in Urban Housing and MixedโUse Developments.
Rexford Assassieย Opongย Rexford Assassie Opong (PhD) is currently a Full Professor of Architecture and Dean of International Programmes Office of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi. He is a practicing architect of over twenty yearsโ experience. He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture from the premier Liverpool School of Architecture โ University of Liverpool; Masters in Urban Planning and Management from University of Rome-La Sapienza; Postgraduate Diploma in Architecture, KNUST; and Bachelor of Science in Design, UST, Kumasi. He researches and has widely published on the following topics: Architectural Identity, Metamorphosis and Disorderliness,ย Ecological Aesthetics and Architecture,ย Architecture and Fractals,ย The Built Environment and Climate Change,Urbanism and Architectural Modernism in Africa,ย Architecture and Health,ย Architectural Habitus,ย Architecture and land,ย Taste in Architecture,ย Architecture; Science and Arts Debate, andย Kinship, Land, and Architecture in Urban Ghana.ย ย Organiser and chair:ย Albert Brenchat-Aguilarย Albert is a Lecturer (teaching) at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. Previously, he co-curated the public programme and publications of the Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL, edited the digital platform Ceramic Architectures and worked as an architect in Bombas Gens Arts Centre. He is a CHASE-funded PhD student at Birkbeck and the Architectural Association with the project โResource: Humans Matter and the Patterns of International Planning c. 1957-76โ, whilst cataloguing the archive of educator, architect, and planner Otto Koenigsberger. His coedited volume โWastiary: A bestiary of wasteโ will be published soon he hopes. He has published inย Architecture&Culture,ย Espacio Fronterizo, andย The Scottish Left Review, curated shows at UCL and the Polytechnic University of Valencia, and exhibited his artworks at Museu Nogueira Da Silva.ย He is currently a visiting researcher at the Department of Architecture, KNUST.ย
Call for Papers for Modern Heritage in the Anthropocene Symposium
Modern Heritage in the Anthropocene is part of the MoHoA global collaborative and builds on the Modern Heritage of Africa symposium hosted by the University of Cape Town in September 2021. Coordinated by The Bartlettโs Professor Edward Denison and Head of the University of Liverpoolโs School of Architecture, Professor Ola Uduku, along with partners at the University of Cape Town, the Africa World Heritage Fund and around the world, this upcoming hybrid symposium responds to an age of planetary crisis in which a precarious present reflects an inequitable past and a perilous future.
The international railway settlement of Fushun (northeast China), with its modern town planning and the Ryuho Colliery, built by Denang and Siemens, and home to one of the worldโs largest open cast mines in the 1930s.
Modern heritage in all its forms and from around the world is the subject of this multidisciplinary symposium, presenting the paradox of being of modernity and yet threatened by its consequences. MoHoA was originally conceived within an African context to interrogate this paradox because the continent encapsulates the historical inequities that characterise the modern and its associated notions of development and progress while also facing the highest rates of urbanisation over the next 30 years, demanding new approaches to the past and present that achieve equitable and sustainable futures on a planetary scale. The outcomes of the two symposia will synthesise in the recognition of the Cape Town Document on Modern Heritage.
Call for papers
Submissions are invited from researchers, academics, and practitioners. The organisers are seeking papers or equivalent submissions that critically engage with reframing, re-evaluating, decentring, and decolonising recent, hidden or marginalised pasts in pursuit of achieving more equitable, just, and sustainable futures. Participants will contribute to the completion of the Cape Town Document on Modern Heritage, supporting policy change at a global level through our partner UNESCO.
Topics can include, but are not limited to:
Practices of coloniality, decentring and decolonising history and historiography
Considerations and conceptualisations of multiple modernities
Modern heritage and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Planetary futures and the Anthropocene
Infrastructure and (post)-industrial heritage
Combining culture and nature, and the role of natural heritage in society
Public space and memory: memorialisation, commemoration and remembering
Modern heritage and the World Heritage Convention
How to submit
Submissions should be in English or French and should be emailed to mohoa@ucl.ac.uk by 31 May 2022.
Notification of acceptance will be provided by 30 June. Abstracts should be a maximum of 300 words or equivalent format (e.g. film shorts, blog, or Instagram story) for other types of digital submissions.
Selected papers or presentations will be published as part of the MoHoA Book Series after the conference and selected extended papers will appear in a special edition of the journal โCuratorโ.
