IFRA-Nigeria's Director lecture at the Institute of African Studies

On 5 August 2025, IFRA-Nigeria Director Dr Barbara Morovich held a lecture in the media studies class of Professor Sola Olorunyomi, to present her anthropological work, and the role of interdisciplinarity in the discipline. Going back to the initial source of interest in anthropology, her time in Nairobi (Kenya), she traced her international research path, including her initial research on Akurinu churches and Nairobi slums.

 Starting from the question "what interdisciplinarity does to anthropology?", she reflected on her work in the stigmatized neighborhood of Hautepierre, near Strasbourg. As both a researcher and a NGO volunteer, she began experimenting with different mediums of research such as drawing, photography and videos. On the reverse question of "what anthropology does to the interdisciplinary ?" she talked of the challenge of doing fieldwork in stigmatized contexts - drawing on her time in France and Argentina - and her goal to challenge the overwhelming negative vision of those spaces.

Quoting American anthropologist Nancy Scheperd-Hughes "What makes anthropology and anthropologists exempt to take an ethical (and even a political) stand on the working of historical events as we are privileged to witness them?", she positioned herself in the continuity of 1970s anthropologists, who made efforts to go against the colonial legacy of the discipline and took a more explicitly political approach. They also fought against the extractivist nature of early anthropology, and tried to develop a more collaborative approach. Inspired by this idea, Dr Morovich organized collaborative workshops in Argentina, bringing students in the stigmatized neighborhood and co-producing with the inhabitants a community action, in this case a community ball and a film.

The class concluded with a lively Q&A with students who discussed the still complicated legacy of colonialism in anthropology, the positionality of the researchers in stigmatized areas and choosing to work in rural or urban settings.

Tags: Anthropology