Katharina Oke - 'Making Things', Skill and Entrepreneurial Labour: Women Goldsmiths and Bakers in Accra and Lagos, c. 1920-1980
This lecture by Katharina Oke will give insight into a research project on the history of “Making Things” in West Africa (Ghana and Nigeria): focusing on artisans and craftspeople, this project turns to productive processes and entrepreneurial labour with a focus on meaning making, creating, and the socio-cultural importance of ‘making things’.
In particular, this talk will focus on women’s artisanal labour drawing on examples from interviews and archival research. It will highlight trajectories of craft specialization, how women engage with the changing materiality of making things, and highlight strategies of how, in changing and challenging economic and political contexts, women make “making” work.
Practical
Date 12 November
Time 16:00
Place IISG, Cruquiusweg 31, Amsterdam
Entrance Free entrance, but please register at event@iisg.nl
Katharina A. Oke studied Journalism and African Studies in Vienna. She obtained her PhD in African History / Global History in 2018 with a dissertation on print culture and the public sphere in colonial Lagos. She has been a lecturer in Modern African History at King’s College London and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Graz. Currently, Katharina is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at the University of Graz and the University of Ibadan, and a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. She is working on her project "A History of 'Making Things' in West Africa, 1920–1980: Creating, Meaning Making, and Experience," which studies artisans and craftspeople in Accra and Lagos.
