French Connexion: "Digital Humanities - For a Public History of Lagos"

As part of the “French Connexion” programme, IFRA-Nigeria, in collaboration with Institut français du Nigeria, organised a roundtable on the theme: "Digital Humanities - For a Public History of Lagos”. The event took place on Tuesday, 23rd of November at 6pm in Alliance Française / Mike Adenuga Center in Lagos. It explored different projects publicizing the history of Lagos with digital tools.

Speakers:

Olakunle Olusola Kuti, How Far Nigeria?
Dr Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi, Assistant Prof. of History, University of California
Ayomide Oyediran, Historical Nigeria 
Prof. Saheed Aderinto, Professor of History, Western Carolina University.
Dr Sara Katz, postdoctoral researcher Duke University.

The managers of How Far Nigeria?, and Historical Nigeria  presented how they use social media, especially instragram to publicize archives on the history of Lagos. Ayomide Oyediran presented an overview of the History of Lagos illustrated by pictures from the Historical Nigeria Project. Olakunle Olusola Kuti, showed how the comparison between present and past pictures help the online audience to engage with Lagos History, and to understand the building process of the city. His current project focuses especially on the History of Lagos Islands' sandfilling and of the different "deflooding projects".

Ademide Adeluyi-Adelusi, (Assistant Prof. of History, University of California), uses the same process of comparison by overlaying old maps of Lagos with contemporary ones in her project New Maps of Old Lagos. She also explained how she actually wandered around the city to look for traces of history. For example, her research team found some traces of the tramway rails that were crossing the island in the early 20th century.

Prof. Saheed Aderinto, (Department of History, Western Carolina University) showed another dimension of the use of digital tools for History. His current research on Fuji music shows how the digital era changed the practices of Fuji musicians, especially in the way they engage with their audience, that is now largely virtual. The Digital Era has then an impact of the way they perform and Prof. Sahhed Aderinto argues that digital tools increases the influential power of Fuji musicians.

Finally Dr Sara Katz (postdoctoral researcher Duke University) presented the new digital project of the Lagos Studies Association aiming at mapping the daily life of Lagos at different times with material from public and private archives (pictures, sound etc).