On Tuesday 31 March, we welcome Dr Shina Alimi, associate professor in the Department of History at Obafemi Awolowo University for our March methodological seminar titled "Medicalised Black Bodies in Colonial Advertisements: An Ethnographic Lens". In his research, Dr Alimi's can be summarised by a series of questions : how did colonial advertisements medicalise Black bodies and transform them into objects of therapeutic intervention, racial knowledge, and consumer marketing? In what ways did colonial advertisements construct Black bodies as sites of pathology, hygiene, or therapeutic intervention? How did advertising imagery reproduce or reinforce ideas derived from colonial scientific fields such as anthropology, tropical medicine, and colonial medicine? Can advertisements be read as ethnographic archives that reveal colonial attitudes toward African bodies and environments? How might reading colonial advertisements ethnographically challenge the silences in colonial medical archives?
Practical information:
Date & Time: Tuesday 31 March, 10am to 12pm
Location: IFRA-Nigeria's Resource Centre
Link for registration (deadline for application: 26/03/2026): https://forms.gle/b8fP7X5fKPS2VN2HA
Dr Shina Alimi's biography:
Dr Shina Alimi is a historian of modern Africa. His scholarship explores the dynamic intersections of social life, media, politics, and material culture in Nigeria. Dr. Alimi is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, one of Nigeria’s leading centres for historical scholarship. Dr. Alimi’s research sits at the crossroads of social and political history, with particular attention to the history of print/media culture, material culture, everyday practices, and the ways ordinary people interact with institutions and ideas. His work has engaged themes such as labour activism, the press and print culture, youth cultures, urban life, and the politics of violence in colonial and postcolonial Nigeria.