Decolonising disciplines past and present: Disciplinary histories and the experience of the end of empire in Africa
School of Built
Environment and Development Studies
Invites you to a seminar
by
Dr
Ruth Craggs
Title: Decolonising disciplines past and
present: Disciplinary histories and the experience of the end of empire in
Africa, 1948-1998.
Date: 29
October 2019
Time: 13h00
– 14h00
Venue: CCS
Seminar Room A726, Level 8, Shepstone Building
Howard
College
Abstract
This seminar
discusses Ruth’s current research project - Decolonising Geography? (with
Hannah Neate) – which focuses on academic geographers (including those
involved in development projects) and processes of decolonisation and
post-colonial development in several African countries which were formerly part
of the British empire. Whilst geography and development studies' relations with
the imperial project have been well documented, accounts have tended to end in
the early twentieth century rather than continuing to examine the period of
formal decolonisation itself. Similarly, urgent debates about decolonising
disciplines and the university now (across Africa and in the UK) often overlook
the struggles of earlier generations of academics to decolonise their research,
teaching and working conditions in the mid-late twentieth century. The paper
takes an approach grounded in academic labour and practice, rather than purely
focusing on research and publication, and draws on completed archival and oral
history research in Ghana and Nigeria, and new work reflecting on experiences
in South Africa to explore the experiences of these earlier generations. It will
conclude by considering how these earlier experiences of ‘decolonising
disciplines’ in the 1960s, 70s and 80s might inform current debates about the
state of geography and development studies, and the wider university, today.
Author bio
Ruth Craggs lectures in Human Geography
at King’s College London, and is editor of the Wiley-Blackwell Royal
Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers book series (which she is
happy to discuss with potential authors). Her work focuses on decolonisation, post-colonial
geopolitics and the modern Commonwealth, and disciplinary histories.
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Audience
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Howard College Staff
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Howard College Students
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Edgewood Staff
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EdgWood Students
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Medical School Staff
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Medical School Students
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PMB Staff
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PMB Students
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Westville Staff
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Westville Students
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