On 11 June 2026, Professor Laurent Fourchard (Sciences Po) and Andrew Esiebo, professional photographer and visual artist, presented their collaborative research in our June methodological seminar. In their presentation, entitled “As we see am. A visual ethnography of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) in Lagos” they explored what it means to work with an artist as a researcher, including how to manage each different objectives and timelines.
On 4 June 2026, the Institute of African Studies (IAS) of the University of Ibadan (UI) and IFRA-Nigeria, held the latest conference in the “Imagine(d) Africa” series. Their guests were Dr Elodie Apard, researcher at the Institut de Recherche sur le Développement and Unité de Recherche Migrations et Société, and Flora Enifo, project manager and co-founder of the Mission d’Intervention et de Sensibilisation contre la Traite des êtres humains (MIST). Together, they introduced their collaborative work at the crossroads of scientific research and social engagement in a presentation titled “Studying sex trafficking: why and how? Perspectives from a collaborative research experience.”
On 2 July 2026, Adam Rodgers Johns, doctoral student in Anthropology at SOAS London, will present his work on the Yorùbá-led religious spaces in south-east London in our next methodological seminar. The borough of Southwark in south London reportedly contains the highest concentration of African Christians anywhere in the world outside of Africa. The Nigerian diaspora is the largest migrant diaspora in south-east London and the most common ethnicity of Nigerians in London is Yoruba. Areas of south-east London such as Peckham and Woolwich, which have large numbers of Yoruba-led religious spaces, have seen a rise in popularity leading to urban regeneration and gentrification. This project maps the impact of these changes on Yoruba-led religious spaces in south-east London, i.e., churches and mosques with a majority Yoruba-language speaking congregation. Religion is a suitable lens to explore Yoruba diasporic place-making as it plays a key role in people’s daily lives. Existing scholarship suggests that gentrification leads to ethnic displacement, as gentrifiers tend to be whiter than the communities that are being gentrified. Therefore, this research adopts an interdisciplinary approach, combining insights from anthropology, religious studies, migration studies, urban studies and African studies to better understand the impact of gentrification on the Yoruba-led religious spaces.
The seminar offers three case studies showing how specific Yoruba-led religious spaces negotiate urban change in relation to the local council, community activists and residents. In doing so, it sheds light on questions of the visibility/invisibility and the displacement/reterritorialisation of African religious spaces in the London diaspora. The focus will be on two regional headquarters of the Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) and one branch of the Cherubim and Seraphim (C&S) Church, and will be followed by a discussion of the ‘revival’ of these ‘Aladura’ churches in the south-east London Yoruba diaspora.
Practical information:
Date and time: 2 July 2026, 10am to 12pm
Location: IFRA-Nigeria Resource Centre, Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan*
Application link (deadline 26 June 2026): https://forms.gle/WnxacZzNsop8CFkX7
IFRA-Nigeria, MIST, the French Institute in Nigeria and the Alliance Française de Lagos invite you to an engaging evening of film and discussion on the critical issue of human trafficking.
The event will feature the screening of Speak Up for Freedom, a powerful documentary by Clément Sibony, followed by a discussion with:
This event offers an opportunity to reflect on the realities of human trafficking, hear expert perspectives and engage in meaningful dialogue on this pressing issue.
![[CLOSED] Call for applications - Workshop "Sensitive and minority archives"](/images/2026/07/W_Sensitive%20and%20Minority_Intro%20call.png)
On 23 July 2026, Géo-Cités (CRIA), IFRA-Nigeria and the University of Ibadan will organise a workshop on "Sensitive and minority archives: select, digitize and archiving." The workshop is part of the ongoing research project (in consolidation phase) “Archiving and Digitizing African Futures: Minority Memories and Heritage,” which uses archival materials to study the memory and heritage of groups in Africa that are marginalized, stigmatized, dissident, or underrepresented, as well as their visions of the future. The “archival turn,” which originated in the English-speaking world, questions the notion of archives produced in colonial contexts. African researchers have reinterpreted colonial archives from an Afrocentric perspective, considering, for example, oral traditions, performance, and gestural expression as “archives” within the framework of a living, fluid, and relational archival approach (Adeduntan A., Omitola O., 2023). Some co-produced projects aim to return these archives to marginalized groups: examples include digital archive projects highlighting forms of emancipation such as the “Archives of Nigerian Left” in Nigeria or, in South Africa, the “GALA Queer Archives,” as well as the digital community archive project “A People’s Guide to Archives and Democracy.”
On 21 May 2026, Dr Stefan Le Courant (IFRA-Nigeria and CNRS) held a methodological seminar on the topic “Mysterious absences: initial reflections from an ongoing study in Ivory Coast”, where he went over his current fieldwork. Though his work touches on migration, he takes an original approach by not focusing on the movement of population aspect. For example, previously in France, he studied migrants forced to hide from authorities because they are illegally present in the country. What interested him was the question of building identity when you have to hide who you are.
His new project, which takes place in Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria, focuses on the people who disappeared, usually while attempting to migrate to North Africa or Europe. Specifically, he interrogates what is the impact of their absence, how the people left behind manage this in their daily life.
On Wednesday, 6 May 2026, IFRA-Nigeria, in collaboration with the National Museum of Unity in Ibadan, hosted a guest lecture and practical workshop under the theme “Make Your Medicine: Heritage, Culture, and Health.” The event sought to foster public engagement with traditional medical knowledge, healing practices, and the interplay between culture, heritage, and health. The programme was part of the Nigerian Alternative Heritages Project, supported by the French Embassy Fund.
On Thursday 14 May 2026, the participants of the February workshop on "Sensitive ways of doing, writing and sharing research" presented their work in an exhibition at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, with the collaboration of the Cornelius Adepegba Museum of African Art (CAMAA). The four groups each carried out a fieldwork in the Ibadan central bus station, from which they extracted a scientific analysis in an original form: a creative writing piece, photographs and an audio montage. From the same location and with the same instruction, each revealed different insights on health, gender, the market and infrastructure in the station. This event is part of our 2026 "Debate of Ideas" programme on the theme "Listen to Sensitive and Alternative Voices to Pave the Way."
The opening of the exhibition was attended by the participants, students, staff of the Institute of African Studies and representatives of workers at the bus station. After introductory remarks by Dr Pauline Guinard, IFRA-Nigeria Director, Dr Delphine Manetta, IFRA-Nigeria Deputy-Director and Professor Molatokunbo Seunfunmi Olutayo, the attendants were able to look through the students' creations and interact with them regarding their work.
On 11 June, Andrew Esiebo and Dr Laurent Fourchard will present a visual ethnography work they have been carrying out together since 2024 on the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) in Lagos as part of our methodological seminar series. Through a mixed methodology of photography and ethnography, they explore the visible hand of an organization whose main functions are unseen, hidden, difficult to grasp or stigmatized. They aim to shed light on the front stage of the union and to expose the nature of public authority in spaces abandoned by the state. The seminar will explore at what conditions do collaborative work make it possible to overcome the clichés and stereotypical stories about this union and how, the practices of one modify the practices of the other.
Practical information:
Date & Time: 11 June, 2-4pm
Location: IFRA-Nigeria Resource Centre, Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan
Sign-up here (deadline 5 June): https://forms.gle/CNvna2ZsnRqFtP2c8
Abstract
This article by Youssef Bouri examines the contestation that emerged in late 2023 against an urban renewal project in Ibadan titled “Baywood Estate: a luxury gated community” built in lieu of the Ogunpa Forest Reserve, one of the last remaining urban forests of Ibadan, and affecting the adjoining Agodi Gardens. It draws, inter alia, on the analysis of narrative interviews, online tribunes, open letters, legal proceedings, news articles, and policy documents. The article situates the Baywood Estate project within a historical and contemporary continuum of urban renewal in Ibadan marked by the socially exclusionary appropriation of formerly public land. Interviewees argue that this real-estate project limits access to environmental resources and degrades a social space for the broader population while privileging economically privileged groups. They situate the project within Ibadan’s ecological history of recurrent forest clearing and resulting environmental damage. The analysis highlights a six-decade-long record in which successive Oyo State governments, regardless of political party or regime type, have converted public environmental commons, often into elite-oriented consumption spaces, with environmental costs borne by the broader urban population in the form of flooding, erosion, and the loss of social and biodiversity hotspots.
Participants in the mobilization were highly educated and exhibited substantial social capital. They initially preferred non-confrontational, dialogue-based approaches to engage the government but were met, according to accounts, by State-sponsored violence. In response, they attempted to sue the project promoter, the Oyo State government, and other actors. The article also finds generational differences within the movement, particularly in how opponents politicized both the mobilization and the Baywood Estate project itself. It proposes an explanation for these differing politicizations and regarding what the mobilization suggests about changes in the resources that enable political access in Ibadan.
The upcoming session of our "Imagine(d) Africa" conference series, organised in collaboration with the Institute of African Studies of the University of Ibadan, will tackle the topic of human trafficking. Dr Elodie Apard (Institute of Research on Development) and Flora Enifo (MIST association) will introduce their work both scientific and associative, to understand and help trafficked Nigerian women.
Practical information:
Date & Time: 4 June 2026, 2 to 4pm
Location: Draper's Hall, Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan
![[CLOSED] Call for Papers - Urban Myths and Experiences in Africa](/images/2026/10/Call%20Urban%20myths_Intro%20call.png)
The Department of History, University of Ibadan in collaboration with the French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA-Nigeria) and the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan invite scholars, researchers and practitioners to submit papers for an upcoming international conference themed: “Urban Myths and Experiences in Africa”.
Full call
Cities are built environments where people converge to live, work, exchange, and interact. As such, they constitute tangible economic, social, and political centres. Yet cities are not only material spaces. They are also shaped by the ways people imagine, dream about, narrate, and experience them across different scales of time and space. Cities are produced as much through concrete infrastructures and institutions as through practices and imagination.
The National Museum of Unity Ibadan and IFRA-Nigeria are organising an event with the theme “(Re)imagining Heritage, (Re) using the Museum”, which will feature a presentation of the research and artistic creation projects, and a roundtable discussion with the project team and grant beneficiaries. This event takes place as part of the French Embassy Fund project, Nigerian Alternative Heritages.
Practical information:
Date: Wednesday, 20 May, 2026
Place: National Museum of Unity, Aleshinloye, Ibadan,
Time: 1 PM
On 29 April 2026, IFRA-Nigeria, in collaboration with the National Museum of Unity in Ibadan, hosted a week-long exhibition, guest lecture, and hands-on workshop. The event focused on the theme "Arts of Fashion and Textile Heritage" and aimed to highlight the cultural significance of Nigerian textile traditions as vital components of heritage and identity. This programme was part of the Nigerian Alternative Heritages project, supported by funding from the French Embassy. A total of 124 participants attended, including 58 students and 66 others.
The exhibition showcased carefully selected pieces, including fabrics such as Sanyan, Alaari, and Etu from the "Five Decades of Aso-Oke Collection" by Professor Felicia Adetowun Ogunsheye at the museum. The display also featured textile items created through crocheting, knitting, and embroidery, as well as works combining multiple textile art techniques on Aso-Ofi.
You can watch highlights of the event on our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgOKKhEMwMo
Join us for the May edition of our Methodological seminar series titled “Mysterious Absences: Initial Reflections from an Ongoing Study in Ivory Coast”. This session will feature Dr Stefan Le Courant, research at CNRS and currently attached to IFRA-Nigeria.
In this presentation, Dr Le Courant will offer an initial set of methodological reflections on an ongoing study -conducted jointly with his colleague, Dr Carolina Kobelinsky, - focusing on the absent and the disappeared in the Ivorian contexts heavily marked by migration (mainly in Abidjan and Daloa).
Dr Le Courant will focus on examining the discourses used to discuss the absent, the role and position of intermediaries in the investigation. He will further address the ethical issues involved in researching such a sensitive topic.