Online workshop 3: "Interrogating the Archive(s)" by Dr. Vincent Hiribarren

IFRA-NIGERIA ONLINE WORKSHOPS PROGRAMME

As you may know, in accordance with the latest government statement regarding measures to contain the COVID-19 virus, IFRA-Nigeria's offices are closed until further notice, library included. However, IFRA’s team has come up with alternative solutions to continue its training activities.

We will host a series of online events using Facebook Live as a platform.

3RD ONLINE WORKSHOP: "INTERROGATING THE ARCHIVE(S)"

This third workshop on "interrogating the archive(s)" was facilitated by Dr. Vincent Hiribarren. It was held on Tuesday 28th of April 2020 at 1pm (Nigerian time) on our Facebook page.

Dr Vincent Hiribarren is a senior Lecturer in Modern African History, King's College London. He is the author of A History of Borno (2017) and Un manguiez au Nigeria (A mango tree in Nigeria) (2019). Dr Hiribarren is currently leading on a project of digitalisation of national archives in Nigeria, to which IFRA-Nigeria is a partner.

What is the workshop about?

In the first part of the session, Dr Vincent Hiribarren showed how archives are not just a subject of discussion for archivists and historians. We saw how philosophers such as Michel Foucault have tried to think about the construction of the archive (singular). We also assessed how anthropologists such as Ann Laura Stoler have tried to make us think about colonial archives under a different angle.

In the second part of the session, we talked about the way we can find archives in Nigeria. We critically engages with the way historical material has been collected, catalogued and preserved since 1960. We observed that there is more than colonial files kept in the different branches of the National Archives in Ibadan, Enugu and Kaduna. We also discussed the need to consider private archives such as those of Prof. Ade Ajayi and Prof. Ogunsheye in Ibadan.

20200428 Hiribarren Kaduna