Posts by Jenni Skinner

“African Studies in the Digital Age” – SCOLMA’s 2024 Online Seminar Series

Join us ONLINE for the first of five seminars in “African Studies in the Digital Age” – SCOLMA’s 2024 Seminar Series

About the Seminar: Digital Re-Curation of African Archives

This seminar explores the potential of the digital for the creative re-curation of archives. Parallel to the rise of the digital has been an explosion in interest in ‘the archive’ by creative practitioners. In recent years artists, writers and curators have explored and critiqued archives with increasing urgency through multiple forms of intervention and re-presentation of historical collections. Nowhere has this trend in artistic practice been more lively or more vital than where it addresses colonial archival legacies through creative activism: voicing silences, challenging colonial narratives and restituting lost inheritances.

This conversation, chaired by Lydia Waithira Muthuma, brings together artist-curator Sana Ginwalla, founder of Zambia Belonging, Chao Maina, historian, digital heritage specialist and founding member of the Museum of British Colonialism with Sally Kent, Curator of the Royal Commonwealth Society collections at Cambridge University. Scroll to the bottom for each speaker’s full bio.

How does the digital open up possibilities for co-curation? What are the limits to this work? How can UK-based libraries and archives on Africa best support creative research and production?

This seminar will be held online via Zoom, to receive the link, please register on our Eventbrite page.

About the Series

This FREE and ONLINE series of 5 seminars returns to the theme of a SCOLMA publication from 2014, ‘African Studies in the Digital Age’. Through a programme of discussion events we will be exploring some key ways in which this field has changed over that decade.

The season will address a variety of topics including digital repatriation projects, new modes of sharing, researching and teaching with digital collections, collecting born digital records, and the creative re-use and curation of digital heritage.

Each event in the season is intended to be structured as a conversation or round table, and the season will include collection holders, researchers, digital experts and artists from the UK, the African continent and beyond.

The focus, given our key audience, will in large part be on the practicalities and challenges of doing this kind of work. Our aim is to share knowledge, stimulate discussion on best practice, and identify key opportunities in the field.

Seminars will take place on Wednesdays from 13:00-13:55 GMT:

• January 31st
• February 14th
• February 28th
• March 13th
• April 17th

The topics, speakers, and registration information will be posted ahead of the respective seminar.

Support SCOLMA

UK Library & Archives Group on Africa (SCOLMA) is a registered charity (No. 325086). As a non-profit organisation, we would love your help in continuing our mission to provide the best possible service for academics, students and other researchers working in African studies. We publish a journal, Africa Bibliography, Research and Documentation, run a directory of African Studies libraries, organise conferences and seminars, and network with other librarians, archivists and researchers, in the UK, Europe, Africa and the US. We also act as an expert body providing specialist advice.

Please consider donating any amount you can when you get your free ticket.

Chair’s Report – SCOLMA AGM 23 June 2023

SCOLMA AGM
23 June 2023

Chair’s Report

During the past year SCOLMA has moved from operating wholly online to a hybrid format with a return to some in person events while continuing to use Zoom and Teams for meetings and other activities. For the last three years the AGM has been online. We are very pleased that some of us have been able to meet in person at SOAS today for this year’s conference and AGM while still connecting with remote participants.

2023 conference
SCOLMA did not hold a conference in 2022 when there was a limited response to our Call for Papers, perhaps caused by continuing uncertainty over travel and gatherings as a result of the pandemic. We are very pleased that today’s conference has come together to examine the critically important subject of Africa and the Environment. We are grateful to our speakers for the wide range of topics being covered; to our sponsors Taylor & Francis and Adam Matthew; to SOAS for the venue and particularly to Anna de Mutiis of the International African Institute for her technical support today. One of our speakers, Livingstone Muchefa from the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, had hoped to be here in person but was unable to obtain a visa. With the assistance of our sponsors SCOLMA had planned to support his visit but we are very pleased that he will join us online.

African Research and Documentation/Africa Bibliography, Research and Documentation
The first issue of Africa Bibliography, Research and Documentation, SCOLMA’s new journal in collaboration with the International African Institute, was published in the autumn of 2022 and a launch event was held at SOAS on 1 December. Munyao Kilolo of of Itu?ka and the Kiswahili Prize for African Literature and Dr Ida Hadjivayanis of SOAS participated in an ‘In conversation’ on African language publishing, translation and literature. The hybrid event attracted a good audience with questions coming from attendees on the African continent. The event was recorded and is available here.

The first volume consisted of an editorial and seven articles, two from Africa-based authors. The second volume is on schedule for publication in autumn 2023, with at least six articles and several book reviews. It will include an article from Clive Kirkwood, Mandy Noble and Michal Singer (of UCT) on What we lost in the Jagger Library Fire. Several proposals are under discussion for the 2024 volume which will also include papers from Scolma’s 2023 Conference: Africa and the Environment: Archives and Data in the Climate Emergency.

The editorial committee, consisting of Terry Barringer (editor), R.E. Bartholomew (compiler, Africa Bibliography), Stephanie Kitchen (IAI, managing editor), Barbara Spina (IAI and SCOLMA) and the Chair of SCOLMA, meets quarterly by Zoom and is in constant email contact. Editing and production routines are now established and working well.
We are grateful to the entire editorial committee and colleagues at Cambridge University Press for all their work in getting the new journal underway so successfully.

Books for the Jagger Library, University of Cape Town
Following SCOLMA’s seminar in June 2022 on the fire at the Jagger Library in Cape Town and its aftermath SCOLMA put out a call for the donation of African Studies books to replace ones destroyed in the fire. A good response was received and, in liaison with UCT librarians, 180 books were selected and sent to Oxford along with a large collection of government publications. The books were transported to South Africa as part of a shipment organised by the Borien Educational Foundation for Southern Africa (BEFSA), which regularly sends books and equipment to schools in the region, and SCOLMA raised some funds towards the shipping costs. The books arrived at UCT on 22 May.

Advocacy
In July and August 2022 SCOLMA wrote two open letters to The National Archives concerning the withdrawal from public accesso of the FCO 141 series (the migrated archives) following the discovery of insecticide contamination in the papers. SCOLMA requested better communication with key stakeholders, the reinstatement of public access to the records as soon as possible and the dissemination of the methodology and safe handling guidance developed in order to benefit other institutions with insecticide-treated materials in their collections. We hope that SCOLMA’s intervention, along with that of others, encouraged TNA to put resources into testing the papers and led to public access being restored in October. Yesterday afternoon (22 June 2023) TNA held a workshop on the historic use of insecticides in library and archive collections, a very useful outcome of this episode.

SCOLMA remains concerned about the fate of the Rhodesian Army Archive and is discussing a Freedom of Information request.

Committee meetings and seminars
SCOLMA has held two committee meetings since the last AGM, on 1 December 2022 and on 3 March 2023. The 1 December meeting was SCOLMA’s first hybrid committee meeting with seven members of the committee meeting in person at SOAS and five joining on Zoom. We are grateful to SOAS for providing a room with the necessary IT. As this format enabled colleagues with longer distances to travel to attend I am sure that we will hold more hybrid meetings in the future.

On 17 January our Programme Secretary Marion Wallace organised an online seminar with Rebecca Adams, archivist at the London Metropolitan Archives, about her work cataloguing the Africa Centre Archive there. The seminar was most informative and there was good attendance. It was recorded and is available here.

Web Site and Communications
We are indebted to Jenni Skinner, ably assisted by Charles Fonge, for managing SCOLMA’s website during another year, organising our online events and putting the recordings onto YouTube – a new venture for SCOLMA! We are fortunate to be able to call on their technical expertise and we are very pleased that Charles has agreed to take on the role of web manager.

We continue to tweet regularly and now have 673 followers on Twitter (@Scolma), a slight increase from 643 a year ago. We encourage anyone interested in SCOLMA’s activities to subscribe to our Jisc mailing list, LIS-SCOLMA, where we publicise news and events.

European Librarians in African Studies (ELIAS)
The 16th ELIAS Annual Meeting took place at the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, Cologne on 30th May 2023. A number of papers looked at the theme “Images of Africa”. The event was hybrid – Jenni Skinner, Alison Metcalfe and Dawn Wright attended via Zoom.
At the Business Meeting it was agreed that the Working Group would remain the same (elections were held in 2022) with the possible addition of the host for the 2024 meeting. ELIAS will approach SCOLMA to see if they are amenable to a combined SCOLMA / ELIAS meeting to be held in the UK in 2024. The ELIAS Annual Meeting in 2025 will tie in with the next ECAS Conference in Prague.
Jos Damen reported that the ELIAS website has not yet been transferred to a new system. The website is also the ELIAS archive and a transfer would take time. One possibility is if any ELIAS member has an intern who would like to take on this task.
The ELIAS logo has not yet been used and Magali Meunier will recirculate to members in due course.

African Studies Association (UK)
I attended the ASAUK AGM in September, the Council meeting in December and sent a report to the April meeting on behalf of SCOLMA. The meetings are always very informative and useful and we are very grateful for the input of Stephanie Kitchen as ASAUK representative at our committee meetings.

Thank you and committee
The SCOLMA committee has continued to work as a strong team and I would like to thank all members for their commitment and support. I would particularly like to thank Pat Hewitt who is stepping down from the role of Treasurer after four year and has managed our finances most efficiently during a time of change, and Sarah Rhodes for her ongoing work as our reliable Secretary.

Thank you also to our other officers and representatives for their hard work during the past year: Terry Barringer, editor of Africa Bibliography Research and Documentation; Marion Wallace, Development Officer and Programme Secretary; Jenni Skinner, Web Manager; Dawn Wright, our ELIAS representative; and Stephanie Kitchen, ASAUK representative on the SCOLMA committee.

This year’s AGM sees some changes in our roles. I am grateful to Liz Haines for agreeing to take on the role of Programme Secretary and Charles Fonge for becoming Web Manager. I am particularly grateful to Jenni Skinner for taking up the mantle as Chair of SCOLMA, a role she will fill admirably.

Lucy McCann, Chair
23.06.23

SCOLMA 2023 Conference Abstracts & Speaker Biographies

Africa and the Environment
Archives and Data in the Climate Emergency

A one-day conference at SOAS, London, and online
23 June 2023

Abstracts and Speaker biographies

Keynote (in person):

Sources on the Visual History of African Wildlife, 1945 – 1980: Images that changed the Animal World / Professor William Beinart, African Studies Centre, University of Oxford

Literature, photography, and film on African wildlife has long been popular in Western countries and beyond. With Katie McKeown, I am writing a book about some of the key producers of such material in East Africa, particularly Kenya, from the 1940s to 1980s. We argue that such material found mass audiences and was a significant, and underestimated, element in the rise of modern environmentalism, particularly its animal-centric, anglophone strands. It coincided with new media and important changes in visual literacy, that have gradually become more global. Our chapters cover feature films, TV documentaries and series, as well as popular illustrated books and magazines. Most focus on filmmakers but we also discuss those who were more the facilitators and subjects of film, such as George and Joy Adamson, Sue Hart and Toni Harthoorn – though their books, particularly Born Free (1960), reached wide audiences (publicists for the film claimed 50 million in six years) and their photographs were an important element of the books’ appeal.

This paper explores briefly some of the visual records and archives used, as well as its potential. While there are a large number of published books, with photographs, and a limited amount of material is secure in places such as the National Museum of Kenya, the BBC and BFI archives, the majority remains in private hands. It is worth recording where this is and thinking about strategies for preservation. Such material constitutes a valuable record of landscapes and wildlife – as well as changing ways of viewing them and the content of popular conservationist thinking. There is also considerable coverage of African people in some films and photographic collections. The visual material arose largely from western visions but was powerfully shaped by its African contexts; most of those involved lived in East Africa for extended periods. Such visual records are arguably amongst the most widespread representations of Africa during this period and have added to the global visual store. They have left legacies that are both contested and available for appropriation.

Biography:
William Beinart is emeritus Professor, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford and formerly Director of the African Studies Centre, chair of the editorial Board of the Journal of Southern African Studies and President of the ASAUK.. His publications include Twentieth-Century South Africa (2001); The Rise of Conservation in South Africa (2003), Environment and Empire (2007 with Lotte Hughes); Prickly Pear: the Social History of a Plant (2011, with Luvuyo Wotshela), African Local Knowledge and Livestock Health (2013 with Karen Brown), Rights to Land (2017, with Peter Delius and Michelle Hay), The Scientific Imagination in South Africa (2021 with Saul Dubow) and a co-edited book on Land, Law and Chiefs (2021).

Panel One: Environmental Histories, Archives and Mining

Paper 1 (in person):

Exploring the historical climatology of southern Africa using documentary evidence from UK archives / David J. Nash 1,2, George C.D. Adamson 3, Georgina H. Endfield 4, Stefan W. Grab 2, Matthew J. Hannaford 5, Clare Kelso 6, Jørgen Klein 7

1 School of Applied Sciences, University of Brighton, UK
2 School of Geography, Archaeology & Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
3 Department of Geography, Kings College London, UK
4 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Liverpool, UK
5 School of Geography, University of Lincoln, UK
6 Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies, University of Johannesburg, South Africa
7 Department of Teacher Education, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

Establishing long-term records of rainfall variability is essential for understanding changes in the magnitude and frequency of extreme events such as droughts and floods, and for validating model projections of future climate change. In southern Africa, the earliest systematically-collected rainfall data are available from the South African Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town from 1841 onwards. However, for much of the subcontinent, the instrumental rainfall record does not begin until the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.

Over the last 20 years, the authors have sought to extend the rainfall record for southern Africa, and explore changing society-climate relationships, through analyses of historical sources held in various European, African and North American archives. The most important of these sources are the writings of missionaries, explorers, and colonial administrators who lived in, or travelled through, the subcontinent. Their letters, journals and reports include first-hand accounts of local and regional rainfall conditions, as well as indirect evidence of rainfall variability through descriptions of river and lake levels, harvest quantity and quality, and vegetation and livestock condition. Uniquely, their writings also document the impacts of extreme weather events upon individuals and communities, and describe various societal responses to climate variability.

In this paper, we present a synthesis of our recent research into the historical climatology of southern Africa. We first outline the methods used to convert documentary evidence into annual and seasonal indices of rainfall variability, and explore what our combined rainfall reconstructions – for the Kalahari, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia and South Africa – reveal about regional rainfall variability during the nineteenth century. We then use examples from KwaZulu-Natal and Namaqualand (South Africa) to examine the ways in which past societies framed, responded and adapted to climatic phenomena, and explore the longer-term drivers of vulnerability and resilience to rainfall variability.

Throughout the paper, we focus upon case studies that draw most heavily upon documents held in UK archives, most notably the collections at SOAS, the universities of Aberdeen, Birmingham, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester and Oxford, the British Library, the National Archives (Kew), and the National Library of Scotland.

Biography:
David Nash is Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Brighton and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand. His research interests focus on the climate history and historical climatology of southern Africa, where he uses archival sources to reconstruct climate conditions during the nineteenth century and examine the impacts and repercussions of rainfall deficit/excess for individuals and societies. His research has been funded by the British Academy, Leverhulme Trust and the Natural Environment Research Council. His co-authors include UK-, Norway- and South Africa-based academics with whom he has collaborated on this research over the past 20 years.

Paper 2 (online):

Documenting Lived Experiences of Resource Extraction and Environmental Transformation on the Copperbelt / Iva Peša, University of Groningen

Resource extraction – in the form of giant mines, oil wells, and their attendant pollution – is one of the foundational categories of the Anthropocene. Mining and petroleum industries cause life-threatening toxicity and irreparably change landscapes and lifeworlds. Sites of resource extraction, such as Johannesburg, the Niger Delta, and the Central African Copperbelt, are among the best-studied localities in Africa. Labour conditions, political agitation, and gender relations have been meticulously documented, including through well-preserved company archives such as the Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM) collection in Ndola and the Gécamines archives in Lubumbashi. Yet, perhaps unsurprisingly, these collections rarely address the environmental impacts of extractive industries and they say even less about people’s perceptions of living in these toxic environments.

In 2017-2018, I conducted extensive research in the ZCCM and Gécamines archives, trying to map the environmental history of the Central African Copperbelt between 1950 and 2000. I would like to present what I encountered, highlighting both the potentials and the limitations of studying these company archives for environmental history research. My current research project aims to understand changing lived experiences of resource extraction and environmental change on the Copperbelt, in Johannesburg, and in the Niger Delta. What kind of sources could complement archival collections in this respect? I would like to outline our project’s use of oral history, literary, and musical analysis (popular literature, poems, and songs) to get at perceptions and attitudes of people living around sites of resource extraction. How can archives be brought into dialogue with these other sources?

Biography:
Iva Peša is an Assistant Professor in Contemporary History at the University of Groningen. She leads the European Research Council funded project ‘Environmental Histories of Resource Extraction in Africa’ (www.rug.nl/let/AFREXTRACT). She has conducted extensive archival and oral history research in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, focusing on social and environmental history. Recent publications include, ‘A Planetary Anthropocene’ and ‘Decarbonization, Democracy and Climate Justice.’

Paper 3 (online):

A Preservation History of Mining Archives: A Case of the Selection Trust and Anglo-American Corporation environmental archives in Zambia’s Copperbelt / Miyanda Simabwachi, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein

This paper examines the preservation, management and accessibility of the Selection Trust and Anglo-American mining environmental archives of Zambia’s Copperbelt region between the 1920s and 2000. Large-scale mining has been a significant economic activity in mineral-rich African countries like Zambia in both the colonial and post-colonial times. From the 1920s, the rich deposits of minerals such as copper in Zambia’s Copperbelt region have always attracted foreign investment of capital by multinational companies such as the Selection Trust (ST) and Anglo-American Corporation (AAC). Since 1928 the ST and AAC heavily invested capital in mining business in the Copperbelt until the late 1960s and 2000 when the Copperbelt mines were nationalised and privatised respectively. However, in the pursuit of their mining business, the ST and AAC generated archival records not only reflecting the impact of mining activities on the environment of the Copperbelt region, but also routine operations, policies and financial decisions of the companies. The ST and AAC environmental records have since become a significant source for writing colonial and post-colonial environmental as well as social and economic history of the Copperbelt region by various scholars. Yet, these environmental archives have rarely been the object of study and analysis. This paper argues that, while the ST and AAC environmental archives are sources of history, they are also objects of study with histories of their own. This paper specifically discusses the ST and the AAC system of collection, preservation, management and accessibility of environmental archives. It also discusses how the introduction of nationalisation and privatisation (1968-2000) interrupted and transformed the access and preservation principles and policy of the ST and the AAC environment archives in the Copperbelt. This article provides new and significant insights into the power of political and economic shifts in determining the preservation policy environmental archives in Central and Southern Africa.

Biography:
I am a postdoctoral fellow at the International Studies Group, at the University of the Free State, South Africa. I was awarded my MA in 2013 from the University of Zambia (UNZA) for my dissertation, ‘Resource Depository and Knowledge Creation: The Role of the National Archives of Zambia, 1935 -2006.’ I also hold a BA in History and Education from UNZA. I have taught Central and Southern African history at secondary and tertiary levels in Zambia. My PhD research project was concerned with investigating a key aspect of historical knowledge production, both in a colonial and post-colonial context, through a history of the Zambian archives. My research works focus on archives creation, preservation and management in changing government systems in Central and Southern Africa. My research interests also encompass colonial and post-colonial archives construction and Zambian historiography.

Panel Two: Material Heritage, Data and the Environment

Paper 1 (in-person):

The climate emergency and coastal heritage sites: archival data and environmental modelling for heritage preservation in Senegal, Kenya and Tanzania / Dr. Stefania Merlo, University of Cambridge on behalf of the MAESaM Project

Cultural heritage sites are increasingly impacted by climate change as temperature, precipitation, atmospheric moisture, wind intensity and sea level rise all affect their preservation. Population displacement as a consequence of climate change can also lead to encroachment onto heritage sites and/or their mining for resources as communities try to rebuild their lives. Whilst comprehensive and sophisticated digital models are being developed by scientists that allow for the modelling of climate related changes in various types of landscapes, heritage practitioners, in particular in the Global South, lack the availability of practical and easy to use instruments that would allow them to assess the impact of such changes on the sites they are mandated to protect and preserve. This is in particular due to the fact that the primary data needed to carry out these assessments, ie the archival records of the location and nature of heritage sites, are still in paper format and they have not been assessed systematically since initial compilation several decades ago. Additionally these records are not always held centrally and they are dispersed across different archives, sometimes outside of the country where the sites are located.

This paper presents a methodology that the MAEASaM project has been developing to integrate long term knowledge on heritage sites through the digitisation of archival data such as sites records, including photographs and drawings, topographic maps and published papers and cutting edge climate models to predict the present and future consequences of climate change on the preservation of African coastal heritage sites. A case study looking into the coastal heritage of Kenya, Tanzania and Senegal will be used to illustrate the methodology and reflect on its potentials and issues.

Biography:
The MAEASaM project (www.maeasam.org) is working to identify and document endangered archaeological heritage sites across eight African countries, dated from the Palaeolithic/Early Stone Age to the 20th century, then share this information to help protect them. Using a combination of remote sensing, records-based research and selective archaeological surveys, the team is building comprehensive and up-to-date records of site types and distributions, which will be made available in an open access Arches geospatial relational database tailored for different interest groups and stakeholders. Past, present and potential future threats to these sites will be identified and assessed, and approaches to enhancing long-term site protection measures and new management policies will be developed with the project’s Africa-based partners and collaborators.

Mapping Africa’s Endangered Archaeological Sites and Monuments is hosted by the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, which acts as the coordinating body and grant holder under the Principal Investigator, Professor Paul Lane. The project involves both academic institutions (based in the UK, Europe and Africa) and national heritage authorities in eight countries: Senegal, Mali, Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Botswana. The project team is comprised of 17 individuals with different expertise ranging from archaeology to heritage and environmental management to GIS and remote sensing.

Paper 2 (in-person):

The Activating the Archive project – using museum collections to understand colonial legacies of African environmental histories / Dr Ashley Coutu a & Dr Tabitha Kabora b
a Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, South Parks Rd, Oxford, OX1 3PP, United Kingdom. b Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity & Department of Environment, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, United Kingdom

The impacts of British colonial rule on the landscapes and communities colonised is difficult to quantify, but among them is a loss of understanding of how local communities interacted with and managed their environments, and their perceptions of what constituted ‘natural’ landscapes. Piecing together the histories of past environments during the colonial period presents a challenge due to the scarcity of data, yet has direct influence on climate and environmental crises in these same places today. Anthropological museum collections are not immediately obvious as being relevant to environmental sciences, however, the collections held at the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) provide a unique and diverse set of records from the colonial period. The PRM collections contain a wide range of biological materials, objects, photographs and manuscripts collected by colonial scientists relating to the diverse cultural and environmental histories and indigenous knowledge systems across these landscapes.

Through a series of four hybrid workshops with contributors across different disciplines and cultural backgrounds, we explored how historic archives of collected knowledge from communities living and managing landscapes in Kenya and Nigeria during the colonial era can teach us about tackling environmental challenges that face these nations today. These workshops allowed contributors to access museum collections previously unexplored for the purposes of understanding environmental histories and the links to colonial science. Through the workshops, researchers in environmental science engaged with the potential of these colonial records as an avenue for understanding the legacies of colonialism on environmental histories, that can be applied not only to the test cases of Kenya and Nigeria but also globally, based on the wide geographical context of the PRM collections. The exploration of the PRM records as a group has had numerous outcomes: enhancing the role of museums in understanding impacts of colonial practices on environmental histories, transforming cultural perceptions of past and present environments, providing lessons on the historical links to issues of environmental justice in the UK today, and serving as a means of engaging the public in understanding and celebrating indigenous ecological knowledge represented in museum collections, but often ‘hidden’ to the public.

Biography:
Dr Ashley Coutu is an archaeologist with research interests across historical and medieval archaeology, African archaeology, isotope ecology, zooarchaeology and historical ecology. Ashley Coutu is currently Research Curator (African Archaeology) and Deputy Head of Research at the Pitt Rivers Museum. She previously held a Lectureship in Archaeology at Newcastle University, a Visiting Research fellowship at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, a Claude Leon fellowship and then a Marie Curie International fellowship-both at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and a postdoctoral post on the Entrepôt project in Denmark. Ashley completed her PhD as a Marie Curie Early Career Researcher at the University of York, an MPhil in World Archaeology from the University of Cambridge and received a BA from Boston College, USA.
Dr Tabitha Kabora is an environmental modeller with a background in environmental sciences and archaeology. Tabitha is currently co-Investigator in the Activating the Archives project and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of York’s Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity. She previously held a postdoctoral position with on the ERC-funded Lost Frontiers project at the University of Bradford. Tabitha has a PhD in Archaeology from the University of York, an MSc in Biology of Conservation and BSc in Environmental Conservation-both from the University of Nairobi.

Paper 3 (in-person):

Documenting environmental knowledge through/with/in material practices / Ceri Ashley, School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment, Nottingham Trent University

In this paper I will report on an ongoing digital documentation programme supporting research on global material practices that are disappearing (www.emkp.org). Based at the British Museum, this programme supports a network of scholars currently working in 44 different countries, many in Africa, to create born-digital records of material knowledge – here defined as the making, use, repair and re-purposing of material objects, spaces, architecture, performances and environments. Practices and knowledge systems are recorded through a variety of media – film, audio, photos, images, written notes and interviews, and increasingly 3D, VR and immersive experiences – which are published on an open access repository hosted at the British Museum using a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

Launched in 2018 the programme is aimed at documenting endangered cultural knowledge, and explicitly recognises environment change and habitat loss as a key factor in the attrition of material knowledge systems. Environment change is therefore entwined in many if not most of the projects supported. However, it has also become evident that this programme can offer more than salutary tales of the impact of environmental changes on the larger fabric of society. Specifically, and perhaps obviously, it is evident that environment is not separate from human practices, and that material knowledge meshes these together in an expanded idea of materiality and knowledge. Further, it is also clear that the means by which we record and represent the intangibility of knowledge, be it environmental or material, needs to shift ground, and embrace embodied, phenomenological and non-verbal understanding of the material and natural worlds. Recognition of these points has implications for how we support original documentation, but also preservation and dissemination.

In this paper, I will explore these issues in relation to African material and environmental knowledge, drawing on the experiences and specific projects supported by the Endangered Material Knowledge Programme over the last 5 years.

Ceri Ashley, Endangered Material Knowledge Programme, British Museum and School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment, Nottingham Trent University

Panel Three: Archival Resources and Environmental Change

Paper 1 (online):

The Archival Trail and the History of International Cooperation in Environmental Control: The case of locusts in Southern Africa / Admire Mseba, University of Southern California

In the early months of the Covid epidemic, the people of the Red Sea basin found themselves dealing with another major threat: swarming locusts. This is a threat that many had forgotten about. But in the twentieth century locust swarms were a major threat to the livelihoods of many Africans. Between the late 1920s and the late 1940s, a locust plague affected the whole of Africa south of the equator except its southernmost tip. Because locusts do not respect boundaries, they often required cooperation to control them. When scholars and policy makers tell this story of international cooperation in locust control in twentieth century Southern Africa, they often frame it as an initiative of Britain and Belgium, two of the European powers with colonies in the region. This, in fact, is a reading of this history that betrays an overreliance on the archives in the former colonial powers. When the materials in these archives are read alongside those held elsewhere, including in the former colonies and the headquarters of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN), the story encompasses the actions of Southern Africa’s black inhabitants, white settler farmers, local experts and experts from the imperial powers, colonial governments, imperial officials, environmental activists and even the environment itself. This paper tells this story.

Biography:
Admire Mseba is an assistant professor of African History at the University of Southern
California in Los Angeles, USA. He is completing his first book titled “Unequal Lands, Bounded Powers: Society, Power and Land in Northeastern Zimbabwe, c. 1560-1960.). He is also at work with a new book titled “International Cooperation and Environmental Control in twentieth century Southern Africa.” For this book, he has conducted archival research at The National Archives (UK), Kew Gardens, The Archives of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in Rome, Italy, The South African National Archives in Pretoria, The Free State Provincial Archives in Bloemfontein, South Africa, The National Archives of Zambia, and the National Archives of Zimbabwe. His work has appeared in the Journal of Southern African Studies, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, and African Economic History among others. He currently serves as a member of the program committee for the World Congress of Environmental History to be held in Oulu, Finland in 2024.

Paper 2 (in-person):

The Effects of Harmattan Haze on the British Colonial and Administrative records at the Public Records and Archives Administration (PRAAD) Tamale (Ghana) / Ismael M. Montana (Northern Illinois University, DeKalb IL (USA)

This paper will explore the impact of Harmattan Haze and environmental change on the physical condition of the British Colonial Administration and historical records housed at the Public Records and Archive Administration (PRAAD) Tamale. Between 2009 and 2016, with an EPA Pilot Grant and two Major Grants, our research team digitized up to 199 separate record collections comprising over 3, 280 files aimed at rescuing the aforementioned records from rapid deterioration. These records were threatened due to inadequate facilities for conservation, overuse and deterioration from humidity and other hazards of the tropical climate, particularly Harmattan gaze which can be severe in northern Ghana. Many of the aforementioned digitized records date back to the pre-colonial and colonial periods and represent the first systematic written historical records for the history and culture of northern Ghana.

Despite the digitization of these records and their current preservation in digital format, I argue that due to the intensification of climate change, the physical protection and preservation of the PRAAD colonial and historical records warrants, more than ever, an equal attention in order to balance digitization with physical preservation. This paper thus seeks to reassess the extent to which Harmattan gaze and other climate factors contribute to the rapid deterioration of the colonial and historical records at PRAAD in Tamale and to explore possible remedies to preserve them from further deterioration.

Biography:
Ismael M. Montana is an Associate Professor of History at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb (USA). He was born and raised in Tamale (Ghana), where he received his early education before embarking on his Bachelor of Arts and post-graduate studies in Tunisia, Malta and Canada. Dr. Montana is the President of the West Africa Research Association (WARA); a non-profit academic organization that promotes research on West Africa and its diaspora and facilitates exchanges between West African scholars and their counterparts in the region, in the US, and elsewhere. He was the Principal Investigator for the British Library Endangered Archive grants that British colonial and historical records at the Public Records and Public Administrative (PRAAD) in Tamale, Ghana.

Paper 3 (online):

Complementary and competing but neglected: understanding the state of private environmental archives in Zimbabwe using Boulton Atlantica Foundation / Livingstone Muchefa (Curator for Education and Public Programming, National Gallery of Zimbabwe)

Zimbabwe`s colonial and post-colonial environmental management mechanisms had generous space for private participation. In 1959, W. Rudyerd Boulton, a museum ornithologist from America established the Atlantica Foundation. The foundation received its funding from the CIA and became one of the earliest successful private institutions and ‘ecological research stations’ in the country. It is interesting to use Atlantica Foundation as an entry point because it perfectly captures early professional establishment of private sanctuaries and documentation of the birds and butterflies. After the intensification of the liberation war and the effects of Unilateral Declaration of Independence from 1965, Boulton gave up on his work at Atlantica Foundation and this marked a turning point on the administration of this iconic environmental institution. The centre was strategic for many environmental training and research programs in Zimbabwe, DRC, Malawi, Tanzania and Mozambique. The private archives belonging to these private spaces complement environmental records which were generated by the government. Archives users of post 1980 period found these private collections very useful because they complement the public or government repositories as well as providing an insight into colonial mentality, African environmental landscape but with little emphasis on standardised archival practices. The placement of these environmental information resources under the purview of Government entities but without legal obligation to provide access to the public has largely compromised the state of preservation and access. This paper brings into the fore Boulton Atlantica Foundation and the Metrological Department which houses weather records since colonial times as cases for further engagement and analysis of environmental archives in private spaces. The paper underscores that these are unique collections which unfortunately are under unfriendly access regimes which hinders appreciation and knowledge construction. The paper also gives a cursory approach to the various records formats in these institutions, the state of their collection and what has been done and what could be done to improve their state. This paper also gives an overview of collections` gap within the National Archives of Zimbabwe on significant environmental aspects.

Biography:
Livingston Muchefa is currently the Curator for Education and Public Programming at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe after being Archivist at the National Archives of Zimbabwe from 2008-2020. He has over 12 years’ experience in Cultural Heritage Management, Environment Impact Assessment, archival research, records management consultancy and art criticism. In addition, he has in-depth knowledge in benchmarking museum, archival and cultural programs in line with national policies, UNESCO Conventions and SDGs.