Memorials and remains of medical research in Africa: an anthropology of scientific landscapes, ruins and artefacts
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Cambridge
Department Name: Archaeology & Anthropology
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Organisations
- University of Cambridge (Lead Research Organisation)
- Museum of Ethnology, Hamburg (Collaboration)
- National Institute for Medical Research, Tanzania (Collaboration)
- French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA) - Nigeria (Collaboration)
- Ifakara Health Institute (Collaboration)
- UNIVERSITY OF EXETER (Collaboration)
People |
ORCID iD |
| Paul Wenzel Geissler (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Kelly, A.H.
Wild Indoors: Room Spaces of Scientific Inquiry
Kelly, A.H.
Past-Futures: A meditation on method
Lachenal G
(2016)
Neglected Actors in Neglected Tropical Diseases Research: Historical Perspectives on Health Workers and Contemporary Buruli Ulcer Research in Ayos, Cameroon.
in PLoS neglected tropical diseases
Manton J
(2021)
Qua Iboe by motorcycle and launch: brokering public health coverage in 1960s Southeastern Nigeria.
in European review of history = Revue europeene d'histoire
Manton J
(2015)
Para-States and Medical Science - Making African Global Health
Manton, J
Debuilding leprosy control
Manton, J
(2016)
'The Harcourt Whyte Memorial Choir.' LP cover, 1970s Nigeria
Manton, J
(2016)
MEREAF: Memorials and remains of medical research in Africa
Manton, J
(2017)
Re-performing healthcare and humanitarianism in Africa
Manton, J
(2016)
Leprosy and cultural heritage in Nigeria
Monnais L
(2016)
The Values of Versatility: Pharmacists, Plants, and Place in the French (Post)Colonial World
in Comparative Studies in Society and History
Poleykett B
(2016)
LABOUR POLITICS AND AFRICANIZATION AT A TANZANIAN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH INSTITUTE, 1949-66
in Africa
Poleykett B
(2018)
Made in Denmark: Scientific mobilities and the place of pedagogy in global health.
in Global public health
Prince, R.
Sustaining the Life of the Polis
Tousignant N
(2013)
PHARMACY, MONEY AND PUBLIC HEALTH IN DAKAR.
in Africa : journal of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures
Tousignant N
(2013)
Broken tempos: Of means and memory in a Senegalese university laboratory
in Social Studies of Science
Tousignant, N.
(2015)
Things that did not happen: archive, resurrection and dreams of public health in Senegal
Tousignant, N.
(2016)
Vers une pharmaceuticalisation de la société? Le médicament comme objet social
Tousignant, N.
(2015)
Recurring dreams of public health in Senegal: plan, fantasy, archive, resurrection
Tousignant, N.
(2018)
Edges of Exposure: Toxicology and the Problem of Capacity in Postcolonial Senegal
Tousignant, N.
Population Futures: Data, Space and Planning from Niakhar
Tousignant, N.
Ideas of History in a Rural Field-Site in the Siin (Senegal)
Tousignant, N.
(2015)
Ideas of History in a Rural Field-Site in the Siin (Senegal)
Tousignant, N.
Observing Changing Population: Making Method in Niakhar
Tousignant, N.
(2015)
Stilled Remains and Polyrythmic History: Laboratory as Ruin, Heritage and Archive
| Title | 'Amani Vanitas', or: Re-searching African Futures: Archives, Lives, and Hopes for Science -series of still photographs, video and polaroid |
| Description | The international installation artist Mariele Neudecker (http://www.marieleneudecker.co.uk/marieleneudec-16.html) worked together with the project investigator in the Tanzanian project site, seeking to portray the nature of stasis and slow change in a semi-abandoned scientific research site. The resulting images will be published in the project investigator's joint volume 'Traces of the Future', exhibited for the book launch, and have been shown in the context of the artist's other Exhibitions. |
| Type Of Art | Artwork |
| Year Produced | 2015 |
| Impact | The collaboration with a leading installation artist, who conducted her work while the project investigators experimented with performative approaches to re-enactment of historical scientific practices, was extremely helpful to reflect on questions of temporality and representation. Neudecker's work features in several of the groups' publications, and will be part of a broader methodological-theoretical publication about the art-ethnography interface. The collaboration will continue. |
| URL | http://www.marieleneudecker.co.uk/marieleneudec-16.html |
| Title | Amani. Auf den Spuren einer kolonialen Forschungsstation |
| Description | This exhibition, in Germany's oldest and one of the largest anthropological museum's, translated one part of our earlier joint publication "traces of the future", related to the research station of Armani in Tanzania, into a full exhibition, featuring numerous artefacts related to Amani, both from Tanzania, and from naturalist and historical collections around Europe, as well as images, fieldwork video, archival sources and contributions from four visual artists who had worked with us in Amani. It also comprised a theatre performance that had taken inspiration from a working visit to Amani. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2019 |
| Impact | The exhibition was reviewed in all major German and regional newspapers, as well as in features by regional and national radio stations. It invited conversations between academics, art practitioners and the general public concerning colonial heritage, ethnographic collections and anthropological practice today. |
| URL | https://markk-hamburg.de/ausstellungen/amani/ |
| Title | Arbugaeva. Amani. Photographers' Gallery. |
| Description | This exhibition of the photographs of Arbugaeva, from Amani, Tanzania, is held at the Photographers' Gallery, London. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Impact | The exhibition is not yet opened. Thus, impact, if any,will be a matter of a later reporting period. |
| URL | http://photolondon.org/exhibitors/the-photographers-gallery/ |
| Title | Evgenia Arbugaeva, Amani. Gallery In Camera. |
| Description | This exhibition, in Paris, featured the photography of Evgenia Arbugaeva from Amani, Tanzania. The artwork arose in collaboration with researchers in the "memorials and remains" Project. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Impact | The exhibition was favourably reviewed, among others in the 'eye of photography' magazine. |
| URL | http://www.loeildelaphotographie.com/en/2017/02/06/article/159936904/evgenia-arbugaeva-amani/ |
| Title | Fear and Fever |
| Description | Theatre performance on malaria and malaria research, which utilised advice from research participants, as well as video footage from the research project. The peace was performed at the Amani exhibition in the MARKK museum in Hamburg. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2019 |
| Impact | The performance raised critical issues concerningthe relationship between science and colonialism, and scientific and ethnographic research methodologies. It opened these topics to a broader audience, including schoolchildren, and eventually took them, with the performance, to Tanzania, where the theatre group toured with the piece. |
| URL | https://flinnworks.de/de/projekt/fear-fever |
| Title | Realm of knowledge and silence - series of 12 photographs |
| Description | The acclaimed photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva collaborated with several of the project investigators in the field in Tanzania, producing a series of 12 photographs that interpret a scientific site through performance involving human time witnesses, as well as historical objects and buildings. The artworks will be published in the joint volume by the project investigators, exhibited in conjunction with the book launch, and published independently in National Geographic, September 2016. |
| Type Of Art | Artwork |
| Year Produced | 2015 |
| Impact | In scholarly terms, collaboration with the artist helped project investigators to gain a deeper understanding in the nature of performative historical enquiry, and the role of imagination in historical-ethnographic fieldwork. This has shaped some of the project publications, and will be summarised in a methodological-theoretical reflection on the art-ethnography Interface. In terms of public engagement, a selection of the images will be published in a portrait of the photographer in National Geographic, September 2016. |
| Title | Traces of the Future. Exhibition. Bow Art Gallery Nunnery. |
| Description | This exhibition brought together artwork by Evgenia Arbugaeva - previously published in National Geographic - and Mariele Neudecker, produced in Amani Research station, in collaboration With the ESRC 'Memories and Remains' research team, as well as selected artefacts related to scientific work in Amani Research station, books, maps, photographs and video, and biological specimens. The exhibition was shown for three months, from January to March 2017. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2017 |
| Impact | The exhibition was well attended. Associated events were oversubscribed. And the exhibition featured on the Whitechapel Gallery's bus tour of favourite exhibitions in east London. |
| URL | http://www.bowarts.org/nunnery/traces-of-the-future |
| Title | Uzuakoli in Music and Medicine |
| Description | 1hr radio broadcast: First broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM on 12th June 2015, as part of the Modulations Initiative for broadcasting in the arts and humanities, a collaboration between Resonance and the Arts and Culture Unit. In this programme, historian John Manton explores the story of Uzuakoli Leprosy Centre, of visionary and hopeful science, of pain and dislocation, and of musical transcendence. Dating from 1932, the Leprosy Centre at Uzuakoli, Nigeria, was a medical site of global significance, offering home and shelter to its rejected residents, and carrying out groundbreaking research into drugs still used to treat leprosy, until interrupted by catastrophic civil war in 1967. Today housing a much reduced medical and rehabilitation programme, it is renowned as home to Ikoli Harcourt Whyte (1905-1977), a leading choral composer who transformed his experience of suffering and segregation into songs of worship and wonder, and whose school at Uzuakoli attracted choirmasters from across Nigeria. Blending documentary, feature and sound art, Uzuakoli in Music and Medicine draws upon and assembles found and field recordings including original vinyl as remastered recordings of Harcourt Whyte's choir; contemporary recordings of Harcourt Whyte's work arranged by his scholarly biographer Achinivu Kanu Achinivu; oral historical testimony; and field recordings of sung and spoken passages of Harcourt Whyte's music. |
| Type Of Art | Artefact (including digital) |
| Year Produced | 2015 |
| Impact | Through Resonance 104.4FM, with a core live FM and online audience in 2013-14 of c.950,000, and an active archiving and repeat broadcast programme, the broadcast has had a wide reach. It was chosen as the opening broadcast of the Modulations series, and continues to register new listeners on SoundCloud and MixCloud. Efforts to sydicate the broadcast, and to release it as a physical recording are ongoing. As an initial Modulation Series One programme maker, I have assited in developing the series, and in assessing submissions ofr the second series. I am also working with Prof Achinivu, the Nigeria-based scholar of Ikoli Harcourt Whyte's work, on securing his output as archived manuscripts and as performed pieces. We have submitted an application to the British Library Enbdangered Archives Programme, and are awaiting the outcome. |
| URL | http://theartsandcultureunit.com/portfolio/uzuakoli-music-medicine/ |
| Description | The materiality of the past Our project examines how the pasts of medical science affect present lives, landscapes and visions of the future within three major African scientific sites, where medical research has been conducted for all or most of the 20th century. The material remains of scientific work formed our empirical focus; we found that scientific norms, practices and aspirations remained tangible in routines and habits, and the circulation of people, resources and materials, and in landscapes and architecture, in collections and apparatus, animated by memories and rumours, institutional imperatives, aesthetic practices and political sensibilities. We demonstrated how remnants of the past can advance contemporary global health efforts by manifesting histories of mutually beneficial interaction; but also how such remains and recollections can precipitate critique and provoke resistance, if they raise associations with past coercion and deprivation, with extraction or lasting inequalities. And we found scientists, fieldworkers and communities willing to engage with our methods and findings as revealing of the historical, political and affective stakes of medical research in Africa. Transdisciplinary research The project's focus on the intersection between materials and the experience and imagination of time - past, present and future - has opened a transdisciplinary space across history and anthropology. Moving beyond existing approaches to 'change' and 'memory' in both disciplines, and including inspiration from archaeology, social geography and STS, the project interweaves observations and reflections on the present, and readings as well as material engagement with documents and remains of the past. This novel, joint approach to postcolonial history of science, foregrounding the ongoing interactions between present and past, has established research group members in key international networks of global science, and in relevant new positions. In addition to scholarly transdisciplinarity, the project successfully collaborated with visual artists and broadcasters, going beyond the expressive capacity of scholarly writing. Ethnography of traces This transdisciplinary concern uncovers the theoretical and methodological potential of the 'trace'. Traces are material forms in the present that stem from the past, but often they are involuntary, implicit, or ignored. They appear and surface in the present, triggering affect, reflection, social ties, or action. In spite of their ephemerality, they carry profound historical weight. Attention to the durable effects of material remains has allowed our project to engage with historical archives in new ways - including their material form and our engagement with them as objects- and to open new sources - including rubbish and debris, governmental routines and lapses, infrastructures and landscape forms and vegetation - to further our understanding of the transactions between past and present well beyond the field of medicine and global health. The engagements that stir traces into action include our transdisciplinary field research itself. 'Tracing', simultaneously making and reading, (sometimes erasing) traces is our distinct ethnographic mode of studying history; a radical performativity, which we aimed to capture through a range of visual, artistic and narrative methods. This methodological and theoretical experimentation opened a new research questions about the role of material remains in shaping present and future, prompting a more nuanced appreciation of colonial and postcolonial remains and their political reverberations across history. - |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Education,Healthcare,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections,Other |
| Description | The "Memorials and Remains of Medical Research in Africa" ( MEREAF) project, was an ORA collaborative endeavour with colleagues in Cameroon, Tanzania, Senegal France and Holland, and its impact is best assessed collectively, including outputs realised across the three countries (and elsewhere). These outcomes underline the invaluable contribution of research links and funding across the European Union, for scholarly achievement as well as to enhance the academic and cultural reputation of the UK within a broader European collaborative enterprise in the arts and social sciences. From its onset, the MEREAF project, albeit fundamentally social anthropological and historical, sought to collaborate with artists and to include methodologies borrowed from art practice, in order to explore the affective and aesthetic dimensions of scientific work in Africa - and of its remains, traces and memories in the present - and to reach wider audiences. To this end, we conducted fieldwork jointly with visual and sound artists and architects, and collaborated with them in the subsequent preparation and presentation of the materials. BOOK The major cross disciplinary and wider-than-academic outcome of these efforts is the co-authored illustrated volume Traces of the Future (2016), which brings together academic and artistic output in a highly innovative and experimental fashion. Focusing heavily on visual materials, this book, engages broader-than-scholarly audiences. EXHIBITIONS The book has been and will be launched in conjunction with public exhibitions of artwork and research outcomes (sometimes combined with public workshops), under the title of the book. These include so far: • Litteraturhuset Oslo, Norway, 21 October 2016 • University of Oslo, atrium of the faculty of social sciences, winter 2016-17 • London, Bow Arts, Nunnery Gallery, January to March 2017 (in collaboration with Buckinghamshire University and Royal Holloway) • Paris, the venue to be decided, funding secured from CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), Spring-Summer 2017 (together with an abridged French version of Traces) • Moreover, Evgenia Arbugaeva presents 'Traces of the Future' in a life performance lecture at Pop-Up Magazine www.popupmagazine.com in different US venues Further exhibitions, specifically on the research station of Amani, Tanzania, are being planned for University of Amsterdam and a German venue. Other exhibitions of artistic work related to MEREAF were • Dakar, Senegal, Mémoires en partage: Niakhar, un autre regard sur la recherche en Afrique, photography by Ashley Ouvrier, 2014 Moreover, MEREAF arranged a scholarly workshop on 'Forms of Freedom - the afterlife of modernist architecture in Africa', associated with an eponymous exhibition about African architecture at the National Museum for Architecture in Oslo, and the National Museums of Kenya. RADIO Another important way of presenting the affective and aesthetic dimensions of our research project, and to reach out to wider audiences were radio programmes, including: • Manton J (2015) Uzuakoli in music and medicine: a cultural history of leprosy in Nigeria. Resonance 104.4FM. May 15th, 2015 ( Podcast available on MixCloud (ResonanceFM). • Lachenal G (2014) L'Afrique est-elle nostalgique? Radio France Internationale, December 20th, 2014. • Gerrets, R. (2015) Amani treasure diggers. To be broadcast on programme 'OVT', Radio station NPO1 (Dutch national broadcaster), November 6th, 2016. (To be reproduced in German on Deutsche Welle). JOURNALISM Moreover, the project has triggered other nonacademic publications: • Evgenia Arbugaeva, 'Amani - Traces of the Future', National Geographic Magazine , December 2016. • Dennis Rijnvis (commissioned by NWO - Dutch Science Organisation), "Het Gouden Zaad: Hoe Nederland het monopolie op malariamedicijnen in handen kreeg." ExperimentNL: Wetenschap in Nederland, pp28-29, 21 Oktober 2016. • Rene Gerrets, Article on Amani treasure diggers, Vrij Nederland, November 2016 The project also engaged with the Ebola crisis, stressing the importance of engaging with echoes of the past in the recent crisis, in both scientific and national press publications: • G. Lachenal (2015) "Outbreak of Unknown Origin in the Tripoint Zone", Limn, n° 5 (special issue Ebola's ecologies). [epub] • G. Lachenal with Vinh Kim Nguyen, "Contre Ebola, e´vitons le ne´ocolonialisme", Le Monde, 20 octobre 2014. BLOGS The project also published on various blogs, including: • G. Lachenal, "Ebola. Chronique d'un film catastrophe bien prepare´", Libe´ration, 18 septembre 2014. Translation appeared on the blog Somatosphere: "Ebola 2014. Chronicle of a well-prepared disaster >>, http://somatosphere.net/2014/10/chronicle-of-a-well-prepared-disaster.html • G. Lachenal, Kin Porn, http://somatosphere.net/2013/01/kin-porn.html • Geissler, P.W., Kelly, A.H., Manton, J. The archaeology of past futures, or fieldwork by fragments http://somatosphere.net/2013/01/the-archaeology-of-past-futures-or-fieldwork-by-fragments-2.html • Kelly, A.H. & Brown H. Notes from Case Zero: Anthropology in the time of Ebola http://somatosphere.net/2014/09/notes-from-case-zero-anthropology-in-the-time-of-ebola.html • Kelly, A.H. Mosquito Huts; Wundercabinets and Social Models http://somatosphere.net/2008/09/mosquito-huts-wundercabinets-and-social.html COMMEMORATION Finally, MEREAF organised a number of commemorative events, mainly in the African host countries of the project, addressing nonacademic audiences and promoting the project's findings: • Witness Seminar Amani, Cambridge, August 2013 (co-funded by Wellcome Trust) • Commemoration of Niahar Station, Dakar, Senegal, 2014 (publication With MEREAF chapters: Delaunay, V., Desclaux, A. and Sokhna, C. eds. Niakhar: 50 ans de recherche en partenariat au Se´ne´gal (Paris: Editions IRD, 2016) • Commemorative seminar Amani, Amani, April 2015 (co-funded by Wellcome Trust)(proceedings in preparation) • Commemorative activities in Cameroon (Ayos) and Senegal (Niakhar) • Community dissemination of findings in Cameroon (Ayos, 2014, Yaoundé 2015) Overall, the collaborators in the MEREAF project have disseminated their findings broadly to academic and nonacademic audiences, with particular emphasis on creating an understanding of the affective and aesthetic dimensions of scientific enquiry - as well as of the remains and ruins of past scientific enquiries - and to interrogate issues of equity and ethics in transnational medical research partnerships, as well as to provide grounding for heritage and cultural work on memory of the late colonial and postcolonial state and its services and enterprises. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2013 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Education,Healthcare,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal |
| Description | International Partnerships |
| Amount | £29,718 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | IP110222 |
| Organisation | The British Academy |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2011 |
| End | 06/2014 |
| Description | Medical Humanities Wellcome Trust Small Grant |
| Amount | £4,977 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 106542/Z/14/Z |
| Organisation | Wellcome Trust |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2015 |
| End | 09/2016 |
| Description | Medical Humanities/Society and Ethics Small Grant |
| Amount | £4,640 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 32574 |
| Organisation | Wellcome Trust |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 06/2014 |
| End | 06/2014 |
| Description | Medical Humanities/Society and Ethics Small Grant |
| Amount | £4,000 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 28308 |
| Organisation | Wellcome Trust |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2013 |
| Description | Social Sciences Exploratory Workshops |
| Amount | € 14,700 (EUR) |
| Funding ID | EW12-058 |
| Organisation | European Science Foundation (ESF) |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | France |
| Start | 11/2013 |
| End | 12/2013 |
| Description | University Award in the Medical Humanities |
| Amount | £301,612 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | 209911/Z/17/Z |
| Organisation | Wellcome Trust |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 08/2018 |
| End | 08/2023 |
| Description | AnthroTox |
| Organisation | National Institute for Medical Research, Tanzania |
| Country | Tanzania, United Republic of |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | Collaborative research programme between University of Oslo and NIMR, and University of Dar es Salaam, studying the effect of electronic waste in Tanzania, currently funding six PhD student and a research network. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Research expertise in medical anthropology, and co-supervision of PhD students, as well as joint funding and publication. |
| Impact | 6 PhD Projects currently funded by the University of Oslo. These are interdiscipliary, combining anthropology and biology. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | British Academy International Partnership with IFRA-Nigeria |
| Organisation | French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA) - Nigeria |
| Country | Nigeria |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Dr. Manton conceived this partnership, together with Dr Gerard Chouin, Director of IFRA-Nigeria, in order to extend African participation in the thematic, conceptual, and resource/archival strands of the Memorials and Remains of Scientific Research In Africa grant. Dr. Manton successfully applied for British Academy funding to convene a set of research proposal development networks and a fieldwork grant award scheme for Nigeria-based scholars. |
| Collaborator Contribution | IFRA-Nigeria provided logistical, administrative and financial support, and convened peer review for assessment of the proposals and fieldwork reports stemming from the partnership. |
| Impact | Multi-disciplinary: African History; History of Medicine; Anthropology Three proposal development Workshops (2011, 2012, 2013) held at major Nigerian universities (Zaria, Nsukka, Ibadan) in each of the main geopolitical zones of Nigeria, with a total of 36 participants, selected from almost 50 applicants. 13 fieldwork grants awarded; 13 reports submitted, with outputs currently under review for publication by the African Studies Centre, Leiden |
| Start Year | 2011 |
| Description | Building Social Scientific Capacity at Ifakara Health Institute (IHI), Africa's preeminent institute for Global Health Research & Development |
| Organisation | Ifakara Health Institute |
| Country | Tanzania, United Republic of |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | With seed funding from the King's College London Faculty Research Fund, I am coordinating a series of workshops to develop a collaboration between the Faculty of Global Affairs and the Ifakara Health Institute (IHI), the preeminent medical research institution in Tanzania. IHI conducts world-leading research on tropical infectious diseases and is a centre of excellence in several areas of global health science and policy. IHI's current strategy emphasizes enhancing communication and engagement with the communities that participate and stand to benefit from IHI research initiatives. With colleagues at the KCL Policy Institute and Geography, we seek to help realise that vision by integrating a social scientific agenda across IHI's thematic groups and research priorities. Building upon more than a decade of collaborative research between myself and researchers at IHI, specifically with the Director of Science at IHI (Fredros Okumu), our ambition through this partnership will be to integrate critical social science research across their research initiatives. Specifically, this project seeks to (a) strengthen public engagement activities at the IHI, (b) expand the collaborative potential of global health research activities across KCL Faculty of Social Sciences and Public Policy, and (c) enhance the local policy and practice impact of IHI's research findings and the international scope and relevance of research activities undertaken in SSPP. |
| Collaborator Contribution | We have identified and applied for funding to support further collaborations, including a successful BBSRC-GCRF Networks bid, out which has developed a £15M GCRF Hub bid on Symbiots for vector control, which has been shortlisted. We are also put in a proposal funding to conduct resaerch into Community-based management of water holding containers to decrease breeding habitats for Aedes aegypti in the city of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania as part of a BOVA Network Pump Priming bid. Over the course of this year, we will run a series of workshops and programmes to identify potential students interested in social scientific and humanities work at the Institute. Our hope is build a sustaining program of activities, which will enhance the relationship between the institute and the surrounding communities. |
| Impact | This is an interdisciplinary collaboration between biologists, disease ecologists, biomedical researchers, geographers and social scientists. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | JPICH Heritage Collaboration |
| Organisation | University of Exeter |
| Department | Environment and Sustainability Institute |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Joint project plan and grant application to AHRC / JPICH. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Joint work on research ideas and future projects |
| Impact | AHRC JPICH application ARTS of CHANGE: STORYING ADAPTIVE HERITAGE LANDSCAPES |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Traces of the Future Exhibition |
| Organisation | Museum of Ethnology, Hamburg |
| Country | Germany |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Joint exhibition on one site of the research project, Amani in Tanzania, scheduled for September 2019-January 2020. We contribute curatorial expertise, research findings and artefacts from the research site. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The partner avails the museum and curatorial expertise, as well as funding for the exhibition itself. |
| Impact | There will be an exhibition in the autumn of 2019. |
| Start Year | 2017 |
| Description | Making Scientific Capacity in Africa: An Interdisciplinary Conversation |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | workshop facilitator |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This conversation between the sciences, social sciences and humanities allowed a critical examination of capacity, but also elaborated new ways of sharing concerns, knowledge and analytical tools across disciplinary and institutional groups This workshop generated illuminating conversations between practising scientists and research administrators, and anthropologists and historians. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | "Archivophagy: an excremental politics of the machinery of memory", presented at the ASA14 Decennial Conference: Anthropology and Enlightenment, Edinburgh |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Talk led to discussion as part of panel. Talk material laid groundwork for cultural activity 'Uzuakoli in Music and Medicine', and for contributions to forthcoming volume, Traces of the Future. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://www.nomadit.co.uk/asa/asa2014/panels.php5?PanelID=2723 |
| Description | "Debuilding leprosy control", presented at the conference Forms of Freedom: legacies of African Modernism, National Museum, Oslo, Norway |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Talk stimulated discussion. An approach was made by the National Museum to include the presented material in a published volume. The material also formed part of a submission to the edited volume, Traces of the Future. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://www.nasjonalmuseet.no/en/exhibitions_and_events/events/national_museum__architecture/Internat... |
| Description | "Medical forgetting and musical memory at Uzuakoli Leprosy Centre, Nigeria", presented at the conference Dreaming of Health and Science in Africa: Aesthetics, Affects, Poetics and Politics |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Talk led to substantial discussion. Impact on contribution to volume, Traces of the Future. Future impact to be determined. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | https://africanbiosciences.wordpress.com/events/dreamingscience/ |
| Description | "Performing African Laboratories - Nigeria", presented at the Performing Laboratories workshop, CRASSH, University of Cambridge |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Talk sparked discussion on laboratories in Africa. Talk was made available to stream as part of event website. Talk also laid groundwork for cultural output 'Uzuakoli in Music and Medicine'. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/25957 |
| Description | "Remembering Uzuakoli: horizons and echoes through the pasts of global health", presented at MAGic2015: Anthropology and Global Health: interrogating theory, policy and practice, University of Sussex |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | Talk led to discussion at and after conference Still to be determined |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | http://nomadit.co.uk/easa/magic2015/panels.php5?PanelID=3648 |
| Description | "Traces et lieux de mémoire de la médecine au Cameroun", with Guillaume Lachenal and Joseph Owona Ntsama at Ayos hospital, Cameroon (to hospital staff) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Health professionals |
| Results and Impact | Talk stimulated responses to our research, with follow-on meetings and discussion Follow-on meetings resulted in the submission to a peer-reviewed journal of an article coauthored with audience members |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| Description | "Traces et lieux de mémoire de la médecine au Cameroun", with Guillaume Lachenal and Joseph Owona Ntsama at Ayos hospital, Cameroon (to local residents) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Participants in your research and patient groups |
| Results and Impact | Talk stimulated discussion and argument among audience, and with researchers. Information gathered from discussion helped researchers to revise output. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| Description | (Post)Koloniale Spuren erforschen. (Studying post-colonial traces). Guided tour and joint lecture |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The activity commenced with a guided tour of the exhibition "Amani" by Wenzel Geissler, attended by approximately 30 members of the general public, including some students. After a question and answer session, Guillaume Lachenal and Wenzel Geissler gave a joint 60 minute lecture on innovative modes of engaging colonial heritage materials, followed by a 60 minute debate. The lecture was attended by about 40 members of the general public. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://markk-hamburg.de/veranstaltungen/postkoloniale-spuren-erforschen-2/ |
| Description | 2013-2014 CRASSH Faculty Research Group: 'Civic Matter: Infrastructure as Politic' |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | The "Civic Matter" Faculty Research Group had a very strong start over its first two terms. The quality of the session presentations was consistently high. The seminar program, stretching over the full academic year, followed from the initial conception of the theme's coherence and interdisciplinary appeal, investigating themes developed from the Memorials and Remains of Medical Research in Africa ESRC ORA programme; yet it also generated unexpected twists and resonances, allowing the group's participants discover new potential in the theme of 'Civic Matter' for further exchanges and collective projects. The Civic Matter group are currently exploring future collaborations with a parallel interdisciplinary network "Planned Violence: Post/Colonial Urban Infrastructure and Literature" based at Oxford and funded by the Leverhulme Trust. Another is the project to apply for an extension of the Faculty Research Group exploring the sensory and aesthetic dimensions of 'Civic Matter,' and especially to create a forum for experimental methodologies in articulating materiality with civic affect and sociability. Finally, drawing on additional research grant funding, we held a workshop for which we developed a related thematic orientation around "Infrastructures of Exposure," which brought together anthropologists, historians and geographers to explore the utility of "infrastructure" as a concept for the analysis of entangled political economies of knowledge and health risks. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013,2014 |
| URL | https://africanbiosciences.wordpress.com/events/civic-matter-infrastructure-as-politic/ |
| Description | 2014-2015 CRASSH Faculty Research Group: 'Civic Matter: Infrastructure in Sense and Resonance' |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | This seminar and event programme is ongoing, and is leading to a broadened interdisciplinary conversation between social scientists, humanities scholars, and visual, sonic and performance artists This ongoing programme is leading to a broadened interdisciplinary conversation between social scientists, humanities scholars, and visual, sonic and performance artists |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/programmes/civic-matter-infrastructure-as-politic |
| Description | After development: critical aesthetics of past futures - Panel at ASA14 Decennial Conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | The panel led to discussion and ongoing correspondence among panellists and members of the audience Two panellists have since contributed to programmed seminar activities convened by the project group at Cambridge |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | https://africanbiosciences.wordpress.com/events/after-development-critical-aesthetics-of-past-future... |
| Description | Colloque international - Savoirs, mondialisations, gouvernement des sociétés et des environnements |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Invited talk about the project at the Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://www.ehess.fr/en/node/14246 |
| Description | Colloquium: Research and the national project: Histories of science and medicine in Africa in the post-independence decades |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | workshop facilitator |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This was a research colloquium organised jointly by the MEREAF project, the Anthropologies of African Biosciences research group at LSHTM, and the Institut de recherche pour le développement (research unit 233), bringing together presenters from Paris and Dakar, alongside presentations by project members from the UK and France-based MEREAF teams, and 45 participants, both Dakar-based researchers and students, and from the MEREAF teams. This colloquium was a significant and well-received component of the project's outreach to African audiences |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012 |
| Description | Concordia University Sociology and Anthropology Seminar |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This talk discussed how the study of health sciences over time can draw on and contribute to the anthropology of infrastructure. It stimulated questions and discussion among an audience mostly of professional anthropologists and graduate students. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Departmental Seminar University of Hamburg on Traces of the Future |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Invited talk at departmental seminar in Hamburg University |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018 |
| URL | https://www.ethnologie.uni-hamburg.de/ueber-das-institut/aktuelles/kolloquium-plakat-wise-2018-19.pd... |
| Description | Dreaming of Health and Science in Africa: Aesthetics, Affects, Poetics and Politics |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | International conference that brought together social anthropologists and historians working on medicine in Africa. Leading global scholars as well as junior academics and postgraduate students presented papers over three days. One outcome in preparation is an edited volume; book proposal currently under review. Other outcomes are collaborative relations between research groups. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | Forms of Freedom. Legacies of African Modernism |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Several grant beneficiaries and grant collaborators presented research findings at this international symposium. The grant PI, was a co-host of the event. A book proposal resulting from the event is currently under review by the architectural Publisher Lars Muller. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | Ghent Symposium Keynote |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Keynote address to Symposium GAPSYM11 'Health in Africa - an interdisciplinary approach' |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| URL | http://www.africaplatform.ugent.be/event/symposium-gapsym11-health-africa-interdisciplinary-approach |
| Description | Homes for science: The Anthropology Of Tropical And Arctic Field-Stations |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | Yes |
| Type Of Presentation | workshop facilitator |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The workshop assembled artists and film-makers together with scholars from anthropology, history and related humanities and social sciences, and with diverse regional expertise, to present visual materials and papers addressing the ensemble of human activities relating to the operation of scientific field stations in non-temperate geographical areas. The programme established a dialogue across regions and disciplines, with a view to developing proposals and publications on the comparative potential of arctic and tropics, through the finely-grained lens of the field-station. Two special issues of leading journals in the social studies of science are currently in preparation. These publications will present scholarly texts alongside artworks, together with pieces comprising both scholarly and visual materials. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| URL | https://africanbiosciences.wordpress.com/events/homes-for-science/ |
| Description | Hong Kong Center for Humanities and Medicine Talk |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This intimate talk raised issues about memory, medical science and global health with an audience of social science and humanities, journalism and natural science scholars and students interested in health and society. It was followed by about 45 minutes of questions and lively discussion. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Infrastructures of Exposure: Toxicity, Temporality and Political Economies in Africa |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | workshop facilitator |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This workshop brought together scholars using the concept of 'infrastructure' for analyzing inequalities in embodied and techno-scientific perceptions of toxic exposure, with innovative thinkers on the relations between infrastructure, temporality and political economy. By examining what happens to scientific, industrial and transport infrastructures over time, workshop participants reflected on how configurations of political economy generate specific relations between anticipation and memory (including that of bodies and environments), between accumulation and dispossession, between exposure and knowledge, and between continuity and fragmentation. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | Infrastructures of Exposure: Toxicity, Temporality and Political Economies in Africa and Beyond |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | This workshop on an innovative topic brought together key thinkers on the politics of infrastructure with researchers engaged in the social study of environmental exposure from history, geography and anthropology. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/25530 |
| Description | La science au service du projet national? Recherche et santé en Afrique, années 1960-1970 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This one-day conference brought together applied researchers (doctors, demographers, sociologists) of the French research for development institution (IRD) with project members and Senegalese students in history, sociology and anthropology in Dakar, Senegal to discuss the historical roots of research for development in Africa. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012 |
| Description | Making Scientific Capacity in Africa Conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | This international conference on scientific capacity in Africa brought together key policy actors from funding organizations, practitioners (doctors and medical scientists, including from Africa) with scholars in the humanities and social sciences. It sparked lively debate through a combination of roundtables, keynote presentations and conventional paper panels, and has led to a special issue publication in the Canadian Journal of African Studies. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/25026 |
| Description | Memorials and remains of medical research in Africa: An anthropology of scientific landscapes, ruins and artefacts - 2011 workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | workshop facilitator |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | For our inaugural workshop, convening all three national teams working on the project (UK, France, and Netherlands), we invited three guest scholars, Murray Last, Dan Hicks, and Johann Lagae to offer their reflections on our proposed research agenda, in relation to and drawing from their own work in whichever way each speaker felt appropriate to their participation. We presented our sites in Amani (Tanzania), Niakhar (Senegal) and Ayos (Cameroon), and developed guidelines for fieldwork strategy and information sharing. We also outlined dissemination, collaboration, and publication timetables. This workshop introduced field teams to concepts drawn from archaeology and architectural history, which have proven key to our field and conceptual work. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |
| Description | Memorials and remains of medical research in Africa: An anthropology of scientific landscapes, ruins and artefacts - 2012 workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | paper presentation |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This event, hosted in Gorée, Senegal, was the second annual workshop convened under the broader MEREAF (ESRC-ANR-NWO) heading. It consisted of an extended presentation of work in progress by the three site teams, and a discussion of common concerns and ways forward. Shared inputs led to adjustment in fieldwork protocols for work carried out in 2013 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012 |
| Description | Memorials and remains of science in Africa: Traces of progress, nostalgia and amnesia |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Type Of Presentation | Keynote/Invited Speaker |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This panel, comprising six speakers (including the chair and organisers) and a discussant from the France-based collaborating team, explored the ways in which African medicine and science generate memories; how these memories of research and care carry or cast away political, ethical, aesthetic, epistemological and affective value. We invited papers that explicitly combine historical and ethnographic methods to address processes of coexistence, interpenetration, layering and displacement of pasts and futures in various sites such as buildings, bodies, archives, landscapes and biographies. This panel was selected as part of the programme for 'Traces, Tidemarks and Legacies', the 110th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, held in Montreal, QC, Canada, from November 16-20, 2011 This panel was selected as part of the programme for 'Traces, Tidemarks and Legacies', the 110th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, held in Montreal, QC, Canada, from November 16-20, 2011 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |
| URL | http://aaa.confex.com/aaa/2011/webprogrampreliminary/Session4335.html |
| Description | Performing Laboratories |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Workshop conducted in collaboration With CRASSH, University of Cambridge, which brought together social anthropologists and arts practitioners, to discuss the interface between social anthropology and visual arts, with particular attention to engagement with historical remains and archaeological traces. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | Project Workshop I: London |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This was the first of three project workshops in which collaborators from the different national teams met with each other along with carefully selected guests to share information about project methods and findings, as well as obtain ideas, advice, suggestions and feedback. The theme of this first meeting was methods and materiality, and we invited an anthropologist (Murray Last, UCL), an archaeologist (Dan Hicks, Oxford) and an architect and historian (Johan Lagae, Ghent), each well respected scholars in their fields, to discuss our approach to the materiality of memories of research. Our project design was presented and commented, while invited scholars also presented relevant work. Events such as these allowed our project to be more widely known and to be shaped by a broader range of ideas and expertise. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |
| Description | Project Workshop II: Gorée |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This was the second of three project workshops in which members of our collaborating teams engaged with an invited audience. Unlike the London meeting, our guests this time included not only scholars in our field but also a range of French and Senegalese researchers who had a stake in the site of our study in Senegal (Niakhar), including doctors, demographers, historians and ethicists, and who we invited to form a broader advisory committee of national stakeholders, including those representing the communities under study by the project in Senegal. By presenting our work-in-progress findings, we raised awareness of our project among this audience as well as obtained valuable feedback on political, ethical and factual issues pertaining to our research. This meeting was followed by a symposium in Dakar that reached a much broader audience (see entry: La science au service du project national?). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012 |
| Description | Project Workshop III: Amsterdam |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | As in London and Gorée/Dakar, we took the opportunity of project team meetings to present the project and obtain feedback from a broader audience. In Amsterdam, we held a one-day workshop to which we invited leading Africanist anthropologists at the University of Amsterdam (Rijk van Dijk, Sjaak van der Geest and Peter Geschière) to comment on presentations on the findings obtained in each site (two papers per site), to a medium-sized audience of other interested scholars and postgraduate students in related fields. This workshop created awareness of our unique methods and allowed us to obtain valuable feedback on material that was nearing readiness for publication. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| Description | Symposium scientifique du cinquantenaire de Niakhar |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Team members actively participated in the organization and contributed to this fiftieth anniversary symposium for one of the sites studied by our project. This involvement created close links with the institution with which the site is associated, while our contributions (three papers, a poster presentation and a photography exhibit, by Ashley Ouvrier, Alice Desclaux, Anne-Marie Moulin and Noémi Tousignant) and participation in the subsequent fieldtrip stimulated exchange between practitioners of medical and health research in this site and our research approach to its traces and memories. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | The Elusive Lab: Roundtable on Scientific Infrastructure in Africa |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This roundtable was a public debate about the nature of scientific infrastructure -- organized as part of the CRASSH seminar series Civic Matter -- that brought together scientists and scholars of science from the project both as audience and participants, opening up an interdiscplinary conversation that was followed up at the conference "Making Scientific Capacity in Africa." |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |
| Description | Workshop and Conference at Exeter University |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This two day workshop will involve academics who have worked in the context of scientific research in the developing world, professional practitioners, and policy makers seeking to develop new ways of expanding the use and reach of 'open data' to the developing world. The workshop draws together questions explored in the context of ESRC seminar series on the 'Spaces of Evidence' with the core concerns of 'Memories of Medical Research in Africa' project. At the forefront of discussions will be the handling and management of time as a crucial aspect of research environments and of expectations around the processes and outputs of scientific research, including how scientific evidence is marshaled in trials and policy-making. For the most part, discussions of the garnering of evidence and data sharing tend to forgo the temporal aspect in favour of static requirements and time-independent guidance on best practice. This workshop will highlight and critically examines assumptions and implications of focusing on research as a historical process, whose various stages inhabit different temporal expectations from researchers, funders, governments, regulatory agencies, and relevant publics. In particular, we focus on situations where the temporality associated with research environments-for a variety of reasons ranging from material infrastructures to interpretations of value and efficiency- varies substantially, to the point of making research carried out under different temporal regimes practically incommensurable (e.g. data collection in the qualitative social sciences versus genomics; management of evidence in publicly funded versus commercial research; data sharing in developed and developing countries). Through these discussions with abroad audience, we hope to better understand the demands and limitations raised by the increasing uses of controlled trials and other forms of evidencing across diverse settings. The workshop will take place in May after the formal close of the ESRC grant owing to maternity leave. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| Description | Workshop and Roundtable at Durham University |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This two-day workshop brought together anthropologists, historians and specialists from other disciplines who have engaged with ethnographic perspectives to extend their study of emerging and re(emerging) diseases across the tropics. It seeks to answer three overarching questions. (1) How should scientists engage with the question of emergence and historicity in the context of global health? (2) What are the theoretical potentials of working as social scientists and historians on zoonotic and vector borne disease and (3) What are the ethnographic challenges of engaging with the past of global health as we move to an uncertain future. The first day was largely consisted of academic presentations while the second involved a roundtable discussion and debate with practitioners from the developing and developed world around the question of the value of the one health concept, the history of its impact on policy and its future relevance. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2015 |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYgVnId1BYk |