Plants in African and Planetary Entanglements: Multi-Species Materialities, Ecologies, and Aesthetics (MMEA)

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Participants at Consortium activities will treat each other with respect and consideration to create a collegial, inclusive, and professional environment that is free from any form of discrimination, harassment, or retaliation.

Participants will avoid any inappropriate actions or statements based on individual characteristics such as age, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, nationality, political affiliation, ability status, educational background, or any other characteristic protected by law. Disruptive or harassing behavior of any kind will not be tolerated. Harassment includes but is not limited to inappropriate or intimidating behavior and language, unwelcome jokes or comments, unwanted touching or attention, offensive images, photography without permission, and stalking.

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Upcoming Meetings

There are no currently scheduled upcoming events.


Past Meetings

  • February 10, 2022

    Sarah Longair (University of Lincoln): The Coco-de-Mer in the 19th-Century Indian Ocean World: Connections, Conservation and Colonialism


  • January 13, 2022

    Jennifer Leetsch (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn): Mary Seacole's Plant Matter(s): Vegetal Entanglements of the Black Atlantic in Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857)
    Lidia Ponce de la Vega (McGill University): The Travel Stories of Plants in the "Biodiversity Heritage Library": Colonization and (In)Visibility of the Global South in Human-Plants Relationships
     


  • December 9, 2021

    West Africa Session:
    Amanda Logan (Northwestern University): Archaeobotanical Evidence of Food and Crafting from Oduduwa College, Ile-Ife, Nigeria
    Chioma Ngonadi (University of Nigeria, Nsukka/University of Cambridge): Ancient Food Practices and Pottery Production in Southeastern Nigeria
    Orijemie Emuobosa Akpo (University of Ibadan): From the Hills to the Valley: Changing Food Production Practices among the Tiv in Central Nigeria
     


  • November 11, 2021

    Elaine Ayers (New York University): Packed in Moss: Bryology and the Circulation of Plants in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Natural History


  • October 14, 2021

    Jonathan Robins (Michigan Technological University): Misreading Africa’s Oil Palm Landscapes: Colonial Legacies in Agriculture, Ecology, and Agroforestry
     


Group Conveners

  • JacquesAymeric's picture

    Jacques Aymeric-Nsangou

    Jacques Aymeric-Nsangou studied at the University of Yaoundé I (Cameroon) where he got his B.A and M.A in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage Management, and the University of Geneva (Switzerland), where he got his Ph.D. in Archaeology in 2019. He is a specialist in African endogenous fortifications, the history of settlement, and the post-1500 period in West Africa. He is the author of Les fortifications endogènes au Sénégal Oriental, freely available at https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/r494vn55b#description. He took part in archaeological rescue excavations during the construction of the Lom Pangar dam in eastern Cameroon and served as a Cultural Guide at the National Museum of Cameroon. As a postdoctoral fellow, he did a research stay at the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rom and Villa I Tatti Harvard University Center of Florence (IT). Since September 2022, he has been a Swiss National Science Foundation Associate postdoctoral researcher at the University of Manitoba. His work aims to document the Islamisation of Northern Ghana influenced by the Gonja chiefdom through studying the ceramic change. Since 2022, he has undertaken pioneering archaeological research in São Tomé and Principe, and is continuing parallel research on some settlement sites in Eastern Senegal and Cameroon. He is the founder and principal moderator of the linkedIn West African Archaeology and Anthropology Group https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12474756/. He is also assistant editor of the Journal of African Archaeology; and is the Africa coordinator of the Newsletter of the Society of Historical Archaeology. His research has been support by the Swiss Confederation, the Swiss Academy of Social Sciences, the Swiss National Sciences Foundation, Brown University and the University of Manitoba.

     

  • Abidemi.Babatunde's picture

    Abidemi Babatunde Babalola

    Abidemi Babatunde Babalola is Smuts Research Fellow in African Studies at the University of Cambridge and an expert in cultural heritage, West African archaeology, early glass production, innovation practices, early technologies, early urbanism and complex societies with a particular focus on Ile-Ife, Nigeria. He received his BA and MA in archaeology from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and holds a PhD in Anthropology from Rice University, Houston, with a specialization in African Archaeology. He was the McMillian Steward Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African & American Research and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Anthropology Harvard University and his research has furthermore been supported by the University College London in Qatar (UCLQ), the Corning Museum, and the Archaeology and Heritage Centre of the Cyprus Institute, among other institutions. His research includes human-environment interaction in terms of the exploitation of vegetation/plant resources for fuel in pyrotechnological activities, and his research on the archaeology of glass in Sub-Saharan African received the Discovery Award of Shanghai Archaeological Forum in 2019.

     

  • vera-simone.schulz's picture

    Vera-Simone Schulz

    Vera-Simone Schulz is an art historian working at the crossroads of African, Islamic and European art histories and critical museology. She holds the W1 professorship for transcultural art history at Leuphana University Lueneburg and is an associate researcher at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz–Max-Planck-Institut. Holding a Ph.D. in art history at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, her research has been supported by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, the German Research Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, and the Bard Graduate Center in New York City, among others. She was the 2022 CIRN Sanpaolo Visiting Fellow at CRASSH at the University of Cambridge where she was also a postdoctoral fellow at Wolfson College, a 2023 MuseumsLab fellow and visiting fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. Vera has been working widely on Florence and Tuscany in their Mediterranean and global entanglements, going also beyond the common geographical frameworks of art historical studies concerned with Italy and the Islamic world by bringing material from Nigeria, Ghana, Angola, Kongo and coastal East Africa into this discussion. Her habilitation and second book project moves from Florence as one of the traditional centers of art history to Eastern Africa, thus contributing to the overcoming of traditional notions of periphery and center in the discipline of art history.
     

     

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