Louis Champion (IRD France - 232 DIADE): L'origine et la diffusion de l'hibiscus (hibiscus sabdarifa): Parcours d'une plante aux racines africaines et son impact social et culturel
[talk in French with a powerpoint presentation in English, the Q&A will be in French and English]
This working group brings together researchers, artists and practitioners interested in plants in Africa and wider planetary perspectives on plants to discuss methodological questions concerning plant research in the humanities and social sciences on and beyond the African continent. Mmea is the Kiswahili word for "plant." What methods are promising for studying plant epistemologies in Africa? What methods are suitable for working across disciplines, such as the natural sciences and the humanities and social sciences, but also with disciplines outside of the academy, including Indigenous knowledge systems? What are the methodological specificities of doing plant research with an emphasis on African and planetary contexts? Which methods are useful for research practices that are attentive to the practices of plant practitioners and research that is committed to social justice and climate justice? What methodological innovations come out of plant research concerning interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches, as well as approaches that incorporate artistic research? What specific forms for documenting, presenting and communicating plant research evolve in these activities? The working group is concerned with plants in diverse contexts and disciplines, including but not limited to Indigenous knowledge systems, botany and plant sciences, food, medicine, horticulture, plant collecting institutions like herbaria and botanical gardens, literature, and the arts.
Consortium Respectful Behavior Policy
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.
Participants may send reports or concerns about violations of this policy to conduct@chstm.org.
Upcoming Meetings
Thursday, February 13, 2025, 10:00 - 11:30 am EST
Thursday, March 13, 2025, 10:00 - 11:30 am EDT
Olga Smith (Newcastle University): Ecopolitical Aesthetics of Weeds
Thursday, April 10, 2025, 10:00 - 11:30 am EDT
Sahar Bazzaz (College of the Holy Cross): Plants of the Red Sea Littoral: PE Botta's Expedition to Yemen, 1836
[this is a joint event with the online lecture series "Ecologies, Collections, and Contested Heritage: (Un-)Natural History and Italian Colonialism in Africa", co-convened by Jermay Michael Gabriel and Vera-Simone Schulz]
Thursday, May 8, 2025, 10:00 - 11:30 am EDT
Edwin Coomasaru (London): Plantation Ecologies in Sri Lankan Art: Gender, Sexuality and Environmental Aesthetics
Thursday, June 12, 2025, 10:00 - 11:30 am EDT
Tiago Silva Alves Muniz (Universidade Federal de Goiás): The Struggle for Natural Rubber Species: Local Processes and Global Stories Moved (Around) the World
Thursday, July 10, 2025, 10:00 - 11:30 am EDT
Tuli Mekondjo (Windhoek): Oimbodi Yedu: Herbs of the Soil
Thursday, August 14, 2025, 10:00 - 11:30 am EDT
Banji Chona (Lusaka): Weeds to Who? An Ecological Reimagining of Zambezian Plants
Thursday, September 11, 2025, 10:00 - 11:30 am EDT
Romuald Tchibozo (Université d'Abomey-Calavi): Plants in Contemporary Art: The Case of Meschac Gaba in Benin
Past Meetings
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Anna Arabindan-Kesson (Princeton University) in conversation with Annalee Davis: Sites of Healing: Plantation Histories and Histories of Care in the Work of Annalee Davis
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Cecylia Mgombele (University of Dar es Salaam), Sinyati Robinson Mark (University of Dar es Salaam) and Sarah Walshaw (Simon Fraser University): Human-Plant Relationships in Tanzania's Past: Changes, Choices, Challenges - and Specifically the Changes Brought with the Caravan Trade
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Aqsa Mengal (Lahore University), Dania Nasir (Lahore University), Kulsoom Din Malik (Lahore University) and Moiz Abdul Majid (Tufts University UEP): Nature in the City: Memory, Scandal and Leisure in Lahore's Urban Parks
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Sarah Longair (University of Lincoln): The Coco-de-Mer in the 19th-Century Indian Ocean World: Connections, Conservation and Colonialism
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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
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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
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Elaine Ayers (New York University): Packed in Moss: Bryology and the Circulation of Plants in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Natural History
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Jonathan Robins (Michigan Technological University): Misreading Africa’s Oil Palm Landscapes: Colonial Legacies in Agriculture, Ecology, and Agroforestry
Group Conveners
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. He was a postdoctoral fellow 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 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
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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