Lancaster University African Studies Group

Members of the African Studies Group         Regular Events

Conference 2010: ‘Africa: Cultural Translations’              Full Conference Programme now available

Resources           Other groups in which we are involved            Events in which we are involved

african school

The African Studies Group brings together researchers and postgraduates from a range of departments at Lancaster University who have a shared interest in African Studies, broadly conceived.  Members include academics and postgraduates from the departments of Linguistics and English Language, English Literature and Creative Writing, European Languages and Cultures, History, Theatre Studies, Religious Studies, Sociology, the Lancaster Environment Centre and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. A reading group meets during term time and a conference is planned for summer 2010.

Stepping Stones Nigeria Short Story Competition:  deadline 1st August 2011.  Read more details.

African Studies MA:  Lancaster's Department of European Languages and Cultures offers an African Studies MA as part of its 'MA Languages and Cultures' programme.  This programme is for graduates who are keen to develop their understanding of European, African or Latin American Studies. Read more about the programme.

If you would be interested in joining the Lancaster University African Studies Group, please contact Charlotte Baker including a brief overview of your Africa-related research interests.

Members

alcockKatie Alcock, Department of Psychology
Katie Alcock is a member of the Psychology department and recently returned from a sabbatical at the University of California. She is interested in the psycholinguistics of Bantu languages as well as in cross-cultural psychology, especially developmental psychology in rural sub-Saharan Africa. Most of her research has been conducted in Tanzania and Kenya.
http://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk/people/KatieAlcock.html

 

appahClement Appah, PhD researcher, Department of Linguistics and English Language
Clement Appah is currently researching for his PhD. He has worked on the linguistics (morphology and Syntax) of Akan, a major language in Ghana, up until now. He has also worked minimally on Swahili, a major language in East Africa. In the past, he has worked on language use and language choice in political discourses in Ghana with Nana Aba Amfo, Jemima Anderson and Gladys Ansah. An area of interest that he hopes to pursue in the future is the lexical coding of gender stratification in African languages.
http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/pgrprofiles/343

 

Gladys Ansah, PhD researcher, Department of English Language and Linguistics
Gladys Ansah is currently researching for her PhD. She has worked on Akan, a major language in Ghana, for some time now. She has a variety of research interests, including bilingualism and metaphors, language use and choice in bilingual contexts, second language usage in Ghana, and language use and language choice in political discourses in Ghana.

 

bakerDr Charlotte Baker, Department of European Languages and Cultures
Charlotte Baker completed a PhD in Twentieth Century French and Francophone Literatures at the University of Nottingham in 2007. Her current research focuses on marginalised and stigmatised groups in sub-Saharan Africa, and she has a particular interest in albinism. Charlotte is currently working on a monograph on Guinean novelist, Williams Sassine and teaches a final year course: ‘Francophone Voices: Literature and Film from Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and French Canada’.
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/eurolang/profiles/754

 

Grace Bota, PhD researcher, Department of English Language and Linguistics
Grace Bota is interested in the intersections between gender and language. She is currently working on understandings of gender and silence, with a focus on Ghanaians in the Diaspora. She has worked on gender and politics in the media, with specific to the Liberian elections and is interested in researching discourses of domestic violence and sexual abuse in Ghana, which she hopes to explore in the near future.
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/gradschool/pgrprofiles/228/

 

heelasProfessor Paul Heelas, Department of Religious Studies
The focus of Paul Heelas's research, teaching (undergraduate and MA) and research student supervisory activities can be seen from the titles of his three main monographs: The New Age Movement. The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity (Oxford, Blackwell, 1996), The Spiritual Revolution. Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality (co-authored with Linda Woodhead, Oxford, Blackwell, 2005), and Spiritualities of Life. From the Romantics to Wellbeing Culture (being prepared for publication with Blackwell, 2007).
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/religstudies/profiles/Paul-Heelas

 

katambaProfessor Francis Katamba, Department of English Language and Linguistics
Francis Katamba is Professor of Linguistics. His research interests are in the areas of English phonology and morphology, morphological theory, phonological theory, and African linguistics. 
http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/profiles/292

 

 

kerswallProfessor Paul Kerswill, Department of English Language and Linguistics
Paul Kerswill has an interest in language planning and policy in West Africa, though at the moment not a research interest. He has supervised three PhDs which took an ethnographic approach to the use of different languages in particular contexts – that of development communication (Cameroon, Ghana) and international borders (Nigeria). Paul maintains links with two of these ex-students, with one of whom he may undertake some joint observational and questionnaire research (northern Ghana). He is currently exploring the possibility of joint PhD supervision arrangements with the Linguistics Department at the University of Ghana.
http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/profiles/293

 

Alison Lloyd Williams, PhD researcher, Theatre Studies, LICA
Alison is a PhD student whose academic interests are applied drama, critical pedagogy and participatory research in education and development. For her PhD project she is researching how performance methods can be used with young people in Britain and Uganda to explore issues of citizenship, build agency and develop more participatory educational practices. The project will re-frame questions of participation within the context of theatre processes in order to find out and compare how drama can build children’s capacity as active social citizens.

 

Dr Christine Margerrison, Department of European Languages and Cultures
Christine Margerrison’s research interests have focused on Albert Camus and French colonialism in Algeria. Her PhD thesis explored the relations between his treatment of women, race and the colonial context, drawing on postcolonial theory of the early 90s. Christine has written a monograph, a number of articles and book chapters, and has co-edited two books on Camus, Algeria and Assia Djebar. She recently completed an article about the approach to Algerian history employed by literary critics whose interest is not in history (or Algeria) at all, but in using an outmoded and dualistic discourse about colonialism with which to convict Camus of colonial sinfulness. The issues discussed will be at the heart of her next book, which will examine History, violence in Algeria, and three Algerian writers.

 

lindseyDr Lindsey Moore, Department of English Literature and Creative Writing
Lindsey’s research on Arab and/or Muslim women writers, filmmakers and visual artists has included work on writers affiliated to North African contexts (the Maghreb and Egypt). She is currently working on a comparison of ‘marginal modernities’ in the work of Paul Bowles and Moroccan writers from the 1950s to 70s. She runs a third-year half-unit on ‘African Literatures’ which aims to give students a broad overview of literary developments in the postcolonial era (from Achebe’s Things Fall Apart to Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea); the course involves mostly Anglophone material but includes texts in translation from French and Arabic.
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/faculty/profiles/Lindsey-Moore/English

 

mortDr Graham Mort, Department of English Literature and Creative Writing

Graham is a distance learning specialist and he designed and ran the British Council Crossing Borders mentoring scheme for African writers (2001-2006).  He was the UK adviser and designer for the British Council Beyond Borders literature festival (Kampala 2005), designed and piloted Radiophonics, a new British Council radio-writing project in East/West Africa, and was a co-applicant on Moving Manchester. Other academic research has focused on emergent African writing, eLearning and the pedagogy of Creative Writing. He has published seven collections of poetry and also writes short fiction and radio drama.
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/english/profiles/625/

 

Dr Cosmas Ochieng, Department of Geography
Cosmas Ochieng holds an MPhil (Cambridge) and a DPhil (Oxford). His research focuses on environmentally friendly agriculture and agriculturally friendly environmental conservation in Africa. This ranges from investigating the tripartite relationship between agriculture, soil health and water quality and quantity to political economy of land use conflicts and the merits of alternative conservation approaches. Cosmas also has particular interests in the political economy of Africa’s development, including constitutional political economy and development, Africa and the globalization of economic policymaking, and fairness and equity in the global climate regime, especially Africa’s trade in global carbon credits.
http://www.lec.lancs.ac.uk/contacts/staff/Cosmas_Ochieng

 

strachanDr John Strachan, Department of History
John Strachan’s interests in Africa mainly involve French colonialism in North Africa, particularly settler colonialism, the role of the military, and the exploration of the Sahara. He is also very interested in French West and Equatorial Africa, the British Empire in Africa, and the intellectual histories of decolonisation and postcolonialism.
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/history/profiles/John-Strachan

 

 

sunderlandDr Jane Sunderland, Department of English Language and Linguistics
Jane Sunderland’s research interests concern gender and language across African contexts. She initiated a seminar series on this topic as a result of a 2007 National Teaching Fellowship (so far, seminars have been held in Leeds, Gaborone (Botswana); London in November, and Dschang (Cameroon) in 2009; the last is planned for Nigeria (Ile Ife) in 2010. She is co-editing a special issue of the Gender and Language journal on the topic of 'Gender and language in African contexts' and also an edited collection (both awaiting approval). She has written a paper on small gendered texts in a modern African restaurant chain, and is at the start of a small project which looks at language, gender and age in English, Setswana and a third, southern African language/dialect, Ikalanga.
http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/profiles/300

 

vermeylenDr Saskia Vermeylen, Department of Geography
Saskia Vermeylen has two main research interests: (i) legal anthropology and legal pluralism with a specific focus on studying property relations of indigenous peoples in Southern Africa (mainly Namibia and Botswana); (ii) new museum theory with a specific interest in ethnographic museums. She has done extensive ethnographic research in the Kalahari with the San and hopes to start soon a new research project on the Royal Museum of Central Africa which will hopefully lead to doing fieldwork in the Congo. She has also developed a third year course on the geo-politics of sub-Saharan Africa.
http://www.lec.lancs.ac.uk/contacts/staff/Saskia_Vermeylen

 

wadsworthDr Richard Wadsworth, Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Lancaster Environment Centre
Richard Wadsworth’s professional interests in Africa are restricted geographically to Sierra Leone and thematically to science and the environment. However, he has a personal interest in African literature and politics, to the extent that they help explain the "context" within which he conducts his work and because his wife is from Sierra Leone.
http://www.ceh.ac.uk/staffWebPages/DrRichardWadsworth.html

 

Joana Zózimo

Joana’s background is in International Relations and she holds a Masters degree in African Studies.  She has been a project manager in African countries in educational contexts and recently gained experience as a monitoring, evaluation and fundraising consultant. Joana has since undertaken consultancies for charities in Portugal, Spain and Lusophone African countries. She also has experience of working in the field, monitoring and evaluating charities’ development projects. In Mozambique Joana worked in a vocational and technical development programme, in Angola with Caritas (the Portuguese CAFOD) she supported educational projects in schools, and in Cape Verde she volunteered in schools and orphanages.

Selected publications by members of the group:

Alcock, K.J. & D. Ngorosho, ‘Learning to spell and learning phonology: The spelling of nasal consonants in Kiswahili’. Reading and Writing, 20 (2007) 643-670.

Appah, C. K. I. (2009). The representation of ISVC in C and F structures of LFG: A proposal. In SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics [online] 6.1 (2009). <http://www.skase.sk/Volumes/JTL13/pdf_doc/06.pdf> ISSN 1339-782X.

Baker, Charlotte (ed.), Expressions of the Body: Representations in African Text and Image. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009. ISBN: 9783039115464.

Charlotte Baker and Jennifer Jahn (eds), Postcolonial Slavery: Colonialism’s Legacy. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. ISBN: 1443801034.

Charlotte Baker and Zoë Norridge (eds), Crossing Places: New Research in African Studies. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. ISBN: 1847180965.

Hearn, Julie, 'African NGOs: The New Compradors?' Development and Change 38(6): 1095-1110 (2007).

Johansson, Ola, 'Performative Interventions: African Community Theatre in the Age of AIDS', in Mark Franko (ed.) Ritual and Event: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, London and New York: Routledge, 2006.

Katamba, Francis, ‘The word in Luganda’. In Studies in African Linguistic Typology Voeltz, F. K. Erhard (ed.) Typological Studies in Language 64, pp. 171-93, (written with Larry Hyman 2006).

Margerrison, Christine, ‘Ces forces obscures de l’aˆme’: Women, Race and Origins in the Writings of Albert Camus. Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2008.

Moore, Lindsey, 'Minding the Gap: Migration, Diaspora, Exile and Return in Women's Visual Media', in Contemporary Art in the Middle East, ed. Paul Sloman (London: black dog, 2009), 26-41.

Moore, Lindsey, Arab, Muslim, Woman: Voice and Vision in Postcolonial Literature and Film (London: Routledge, 2008).

Strachan, John, ‘The Colonial Identity of Wine: The Leakey Affair and the Franco-Algerian Order of Things,' Social History of Alcohol and Drugs: An Interdisciplinary Journal 21: 2 (2007) 118-137.

Strachan, John, ‘The Pasteurization of Algeria?’, French History 20: 3 (2006) 260-275.

Vermeylen, Saskia, Contextualising 'Fair' and 'Equitable': the San's Reflections on the Hoodia Benefit-Sharing Agreement. Local Environment, 12.4 (2007) pp. 423-436. ISSN 1469-6711 (electronic) 1354-9839 (paper)


Regular Events

Reading Group
The African Studies Reading Group meets regularly during term time. Please contact c.baker@lancaster.ac.uk if you would like to join us.

Research seminars
The group held two research seminars on 29 April 2009 and 22 May 2009 at which colleagues presented current Africa-related research.  Click here to download our Research Seminar Series 2010-2011 (Word document).

 

 

Conference 2010: ‘Africa: Cultural Translations’

The conference will take place from 21-22 May 2010 at Lancaster University.

The Conference Programme is now online:  click here to read and download full details.

Click here for pictures of Goretti Kyomuhendo at the Conference.

Call for papers:

Scholars working on Africa-related topics are often faced with social, cultural or linguistic gaps that open up in the translation from one form of cultural representation to another. This conference seeks to explore translation, not only on a linguistic level, but in relation to the spaces and tensions between one cultural form or practice and another, one medium and another, or between reality and representation.

gulu2007Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

    • Tensions between form, structure and sense
    • The translation of theoretical approaches
    • Interdisciplinarity and the translation of disciplinary languages
    • The role of digital technologies
    • Non-verbal expression and representations of Africa
    • Performance-based approaches (dance, drama, music) as a means of researching Africa
    • The oral and the written
    • What gets lost in translation
    • The position of the Western and/or African researcher
    • Tensions between and subversions of forms of cultural representation
    • Fiction as a form of writing over reality
    • Discourse and gender
    • Translating feminisms
    • The translation of rights issues between different contexts
    • Data and the written form
    • English as the language of the global academy

 

Please send abstracts of 300-500 words accompanied by your title, name, institutional affiliation and a 100 word bio to Charlotte Baker by 31 January 2010.

Resources


• Bibliography ‘Gender and Language in African Contexts’ (available as a Word document)
• Mailing list for Developmental Psychologists working in Africa DEVPSY-AFRICA@JISCMAIL.AC.U

Other groups in which we are involved


• The British Association of Applied Linguistics Special Interest Group, ‘Language in Africa’ http://www.baal.org.uk/index.html
• Society for Francophone Postcolonial Studies www.sfps.ac.uk
• Postcolonial Studies Association http://www.postcolonialstudiesassociation.co.uk

Events in which we are involved


• ‘Gender and Language in African Contexts’ Conference in Nigeria in April 2010
• ‘African Studies Association UK Biennial Conference’, 16-19 September 2010 http://www.asauk.net/conferences/asauk10.html
• ‘International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development’ Biennial Meeting, Lusaka, Zambia in July 2010.

 

FASS

Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research, County College, Lancaster University, LA1 4YD, UK