Join the opening of the "Vivre le végétal en ville à Dakar, Ìbàdàn, Porto-Novo, Yaoundé" ("Living with Plants in Dakar, Ìbàdàn, Porto-Novo, and Yaoundé") at the Humathèque (Paris), on 18 December. This research-creation event marks the closing of our INFRAPATRI project, headed by former IFRA-Nigeria Deputy-Director, Dr Emilie Guitard. This exhibition explores the rich relationships between inhabitants and trees in four major African cities by bringing together the writing and art of photographers, film makers, visual artists and social science researchers produced as part of the INFRAPATRI project.
Register for the opening and read the program here.
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On 4 December 2025, the Institute of African Studies (University of Ibadan) and IFRA-Nigeria will hold the first conference of their Imagine(d) Africa series. Dr Chrystel Oloukoï, assistant professor of Geography at the University of Washington, received their PhD in African Studies from Harvard University in 2024 and will be the guest speaker. Their talk, entitled "Nocturnal Lagos: In the searchlight of a police cruiser" will interrogate what a (post)colonial obsession with nighttime as a spacetime of regulation, teaches us about colonial and postcolonial sovereignty.
While sex workers, gender non-conforming subjects, night revelers and low-income residents have long been the primary targets of state-sanctioned violence, the pandemic-related 2020 large scale curfews and lockdowns have expanded the scope of police brutality, and fractured the hegemony of a “security bargain” between the ruling classes and the population. Disassembling the myriad formal and informal “violence workers” which exercise at night, a hydra headed “nightwatch state”, with proliferating arms, but shaky feet, they contend that nighttime operates as a category of anxiety, displacement for nervous, paranoid states and provides a window into the nature of the contemporary “state-effect.”
Practical information
Location: online conference
Date & Time: 4 December 2025, 4-6pm (WAT)
Sign-up before 03/12: https://forms.gle/inVN5fRFnv1uzBR79
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"Programme Suds" is a multidisciplinary programme organized by ENS-PSL school, initiated in 2022 following a symposium at ENS. Its aim is to support, coordinate, and develop training and research on/with the Global South at ENS, but also to strengthen and build multidisciplinary research and training partnerships with institutions and researchers from the Global South. It is a collaboration between ENS, Université Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar (Senegal), Université de Thiès (Senegal) and IFRA-Nigeria.
You can learn more about the seminars, events and student grants of this programme on their website.
The National Museum of Lagos and IFRA-Nigeria are offering academic research grants for researchers to work on the documents and artifacts of the Museum, focusing on questionning the notions of "heritages" and "alternative heritages".
Each of the selected researchers will have to participate to a colloquium that will be organized in May 2026 in Lagos on the theme “Re-Imagining Nigeria Heritage” and will have subsequently to submit awritten article for IFRA-Nigeria working papers .
This grant is part of our Nigerian Alternative Heritages project, made possible by the French Embassy Fund.
Deadline for applications: 7 December 2025
Read the full call below or download it here.
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On 19 November, the National Museum of Unity and IFRA-Nigeria are organising their newest event spotlighting community inclusion through our event on Accessible & Inclusive Public Spaces, featuring a Guest Lecture, roundtable, and hands-on exhibition. This event is part of our Nigerian Alternative Heritages project, made possible by the French Embassy Fund.
The event will comprise of a lecture by Dr Esther O. Oyefeso (Department of Special Education, University of Ibadan), a scholar and advocate for inclusive design & programmes for people with developmental disabilities, and of a roundtable discussion where educators and disability advocates such as Lawal Lateef (Cheshire Homes), Mrs Akano (Methodist Grammar School, Bodija), Adegbola Isaac Kehinde (Oniyere Commercial Grammar School), and Bamidele Oluyinka (Bam-Dell Disabilities & Orphanage Home) will share practical experiences and recommendations and will be moderated by Ms Adéjọkẹ́ R. ADÉTÒRÒ.
The day will be capped with a hands‑on exhibition of tactile and sensory engagement with pottery, mats, wooden objects, and sculptures — curated for individuals with physical, sensory, cognitive, and invisible disabilities.
Practical information:
Date: 19 November 2025 (immersion 09:00 — programme from 10:00)
Venue: National Museum of Unity, Aleshinloye, Ibadan
No Registration is required, and special needs are considered.
The Nigerian Alternative Heritages Project is a FEF-financed initiative of IFRA-Nigeria in collaboration with the National Museum of Unity, Ibadan. The project aims to foster scientific engagement through the exchange of knowledge and insights, research co-creation, and dissemination by facilitating talks and dialogues with academics, practitioners, and the public. The partnership between these two institutions has led to more public-facing events that open up the Museum of Unity Ibadan, allowing it to engage a new audience in learning about and exploring the heritages of the Nigerian people, fostering cultural understanding, awareness, and ultimately, knowledge production. At the core of the questions that have emanated from these engagements is the theme of “(Re)imagining Heritage, (Re)using the Museum”.
This grant was incorporated into the FEF project to facilitate and support a team of researchers and artists in conducting original projects, in the form of science- and art-based pieces, such as drawings, paintings, performances, videos, and sound pieces, on topics related to heritage and museums. Proposals must consider and mobilise the collections of the National Museum of Unity, Ibadan.
Deadline for application: 11:59 PM on December 1, 2025
Notification of successful application: 3rd week of December 2025
Project timeline: January to May 2026
Read the full call here
Our next methodological seminar will take place on 9 December 2025. It will feature Dr Moruff Mudasiru, affiliated with the Department of Archeology and Anthropology of the University of Ibadan. He will present on the topic "Ethnography of Prayer Commodification: Field Encounters, Methodological Challenges, and Theoretical Reflections from Ibadan." Drawing on his experience studying Jálàbí, the Islamic petitionary prayer, in Ibadan he will bring the audience through a fieldwork marked by trust-building, ethical dilemmas and unexpected events, and how to practice ethnography in such circumstances. His work also adopts a hermeneutic theory as the framework to interpret the symbolic and economic meanings of prayer practices. It therefore connects with the anthropology of Islam.
Practical information
Date & Time: 9 December 2025, 10am-12pm
Location: IFRA-Nigeria Resources Centre, Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan
Register here before 05/12/2025: https://forms.gle/Xp1SSxsGhWwLo4f69
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Marie Lureau, Research Project Manager at IFRA-Nigeria, will hold an exploratory panel at the Lagos Studies Association Conference 2026 focusing on 'non-religion' and 'anti-religion' on the African continent. This panel will seek to open secularism studies, largely built on the Western world, to Africa. It questions the various experiences of 'non-religion' on the continent, the forms of 'anti-religion' in activism, their intellectual roots and the best terms to define them.
Read the full call below or download it here.
Deadline for abstracts: 1 January 2026.
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Dr Delphine Manetta, IFRA’s deputy director, will hold a panel at the Lagos Studies Association Conference 2026 focusing on the role of care in the construction of masculinities in Africa, but proposing several shifts in perspective from the literature from a perspective that emerged with Western scholars to one more centered on African perspectives. It will also discuss care as a critical tool for discussing the imaginaries surrounding masculinities in Africa and understanding experiences of masculinity in different social settings.
Deadline for abstracts: 1 January 2026
Read the full call below or download it here.
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IFAS-Recherche and IFRA-Nigeria are opening a call for expressions of interest for researchers and artists for a series of workshops on "Creation as Research, Research as Creation".
These workshops aim to further reflect on the methods, possibilities, and challenges raised by the use of creative practices in academic research, and conversely, by the integration of research methodologies into creative practice. They will take place between November 2025 and May 2026.
Learn more below or download the full call here.
Deadline: 31 October, 2025.
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On 16 October, 2025, Joel Abah, doctoral candidate at the Department of Peace, Security and Humanitarian studies at the University of Ibadan, presented his work on communities in Benue displaced camps during our latest methodological seminar "Maps, Memories, and the Craft of Ethnography: Using Participatory Tools in Displacement Research in Conflict-Affected Communities".
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IFRA-Nigeria is opening its call for 2026 Research Grants!
Open to master's student, doctoral students, postdoctoral and researchers working in humanities and social sciences on a country under IFRA-Nigeria's geographical mandate (Nigeria, Cameroon, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Liberia, Gambia, Niger, Chad and Burkina Faso). We accept applications in French or English.
Download the full call or read more below
You can download the templates on the application form.
Deadline for application: 30 November 2025.
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On 8 October 2025, the new IFRA-Nigeria director, Dr. Pauline Guinard, and deputy-director, Dr. Delphine Manetta met with two of our Nigerian Alternative Heritages collaborators : the Cultural Centre and the National Museum of Unity, Ibadan.
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IFRA-Nigeria Director, Dr. Pauline Guinard, and Research Project Manager, Marie Lureau, attended the opening night of the Afrobeat Rebellion : Fela Anikulapo Kuti exhibition. Organized by the French Embassy in Nigeria and the Kuti family, this exhibition initially presented at the Philharmonie in Paris in 2022, has been augmented for its showing in Lagos. The opening night included an interactive art piece and a concert by Seun Kuti, Fela's son, and the Ezra Collective.
The book of Professor Sola Olorunyomi, Director of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ibadan, Afrobeat! Fela and the imagined continent is for sale at the exhibition' shop. The book was co-published by IFRA-Nigeria and Noirledge.
The exhibition remains open and freely accessible to all at the Felabration hall, Ecobank headquarters in Lagos, until 28 December.
Between 24 and 26 September, Pauline Guinard, IFRA-Nigeria Director, and Marie Lureau, Research Project Manager, attended the 2025 Biennial conference of the African Studies Association in Africa (ASAA). Set at the University of Cabo Verde, in Praia, this event regrouped scholars from all over the continent and beyond, for numerous panels under the theme "African Responses to Global Vulnerabilities".
Dr Guinard presented her own work on the destruction of Bar Beach and the geography of emotions, in the panel "Contesting Power: Political Agency and Resistance in Africa".
IFRA-Nigeria has also become a member of the ASAA, as we are proud to share its mission to promote and celebrate Africa’s unique contributions to the study and understanding of the peoples and cultures of Africa and the Diaspora.
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