Dr Barbara Morovich

Dr Barbara Morovich

Director of IFRA-Nigeria

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I hold a master's degree in archaeology from the University of Trieste (Italy), a doctorate in anthropology and ethnology from EHESS-Paris (France) and a Habilitation (HDR) in social anthropology (Université de Paris-Cité). I’m currently Associate Professor in social anthropology at the École nationale supérieure d'architecture of the University of Strasbourg, and on detachment as director at IFRA-Nigeria.

In my view, the anthropologist, far from being a mere observer of the society, is involved in its making: her/his economically, politically and physically ‘situated’ view must be deconstructed. After a thesis on religious movements in disadvantaged contexts in Nairobi (Kenya), I focused on social emergences and socio-spatial, memory and heritage transformations in working-class or stigmatized neighbourhoods affected by urban change in France (Strasbourg), Argentina (Buenos Aires) and South Africa (Johannesburg). To carry out a 10-year fieldwork project in a stigmatized neighbourhood of Strasbourg, I founded a transdisciplinary association, Horizome. This has led to a strong desire to democratise anthropological knowledge, thanks to projects co-constructed with community players, leading to the publication of transdisciplinary works.

The research I carry out in Nigeria has two components. First, the setting up of a project to capitalise research into the digitisation of archives to create a network of researchers in Africa and Europe on African digital archives: the “Archiving and digitizing the future from Africa: production, circulation, mobilisation” project. Secondly, a field-work in Ibadan, to explore the dynamics of urban change (demolitions, renovations, deforestation, etc.) in relation to so-called ‘cultural’, memorialisation and heritage projects, which mask neo-liberal logics.

Latest publications

2025 (forthcoming): Céline Barrère, Muriel Girard, Barbara Morovich (coord.), « Faire avec ou défaire l’héritage : espaces, architectures et paysages de la colonialité / Making or breaking with legacy: colonial spaces, landscapes and architecture », Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale et urbaine et paysagère.

2025 (forthcoming): Barbara Morovich & Sa’eed Husaini, « Promises and Perils of Participation in Digital Restitution Projects in Nigeria ». (Submitted to Journal of African Cultural Studies).

2023: Barbara Morovich et Monique Selim (coord.), « Imaginaires en pandémie », Journal des Anthropologues, n° 172-173, 2023.

2023: Judith Hayem et Barbara Morovich, « Un jardin urbain rastafari face au Covid en Afrique du Sud », Journal des Anthropologues, n° 172-173, 2023, dans « Imaginaires en pandémie », Barbara Morovich et Monique Selim (coord.), p. 43-60.

2022: Barbara Morovich, « Hautepierre, Strasbourg. L’entre-deux d’une situation de rénovation urbaine : négociations, ruses et espaces associatifs », in O. Boucheron et M. Palumbo (dir.), L’Entre-deux barres, une ethnographie de la transformation des ensembles de logements collectifs par leurs habitants, Presse universitaire de Saint-Étienne.

2021: Barbara Morovich & Pauline Guinard, « An Uncertain Heritage and Resistance: Transforming the Drill Hall in Johannesburg », in Hilton Judin (dir.), Falling monuments, reluctant ruins. The persistence of the past in the architecture of apartheid, Johannesburg, Wits University Press, p. 174-190.