Conferences
Oral History Netzwerktreffen
Artisanal labour in Accra, Ghana and Lagos, Nigeria – first experiences with oral history interviews
This presentation addressed conceptual and practical reflections and experiences with oral history in the context of the project.
Firstly, it reflected on the relationship between the different methods of the project. The presentation addressed the interplay between conceptual aims and the realities of conducting fieldwork.
Secondly, the presentation offered a first reflection on ‘approaching the field’: It addressd the position of the researcher in the socio-economic context of Lagos and Accra, and reflected on the position of the researcher in the context of multiple and complex cultural and national ‘belongings’ – a so-called “halfie”-position by virtue of migration, overseas education or parentage.
Thirdly, and based on preliminary insights, this paper reflected on possibilities and constraints of writing a history of “making things”.
Lagos Studies Association Conference 2023
Navigating and negotiating schools and regimes of artisanal production: Goldsmiths in Lagos, ca. 1920-1980
This presentation offered a snapshot of ongoing research on artisans and craftspeople, and in particular goldsmiths. It sought to give an overview of the history of goldsmithing in Lagos, and then turned to the ways in which craftspeople were ‘educated’ more generally. The paper addressed how practicioners envisioned and called for new aesthetic positions, not least against the backdrop of the ways misssionaries and colonial administrators had envisioned the practising of arts and crafts. Moreover, this presentation turned to the introduction of tests for goldsmiths in 1944, and highlighted how goldsmiths contested and challenged colonial notions of what constituted ‘valuable’ knowledge for practising the profession.
European Conference on African Studies 2023
Projecting material futures – craftspeople and entrepreneurs in colonial Nigeria
This paper focused on visionary practices of people engaging in the production of goods or the provision of services. That is to say, it turned to the ways in which ‘entrepreneurs’ navigated the colonial economy, to their prospections of how to secure survival and realise their economic aspirations. In particular, the paper highlighted how the African Home and Foreign Industries Bakery as well as I.B. Thomas and his Akede Eko printing works sought to secure loans from the Colonial Development Board to expand their businesses in the 1940s. It showed how the two applicants were encountering unknowable decision-making processes and in order to anticipate these, were gathering information, as well as seeking to shape presentations of their economic ambitions in a way that was legible to colonial projections for economic futures.
