ALMEDA is exploring new methodological and theoretical approaches to the problems faced by African expressive cultures in the formal archive. In this spirit, we will be publishing a series of exploratory pieces, meant to encourage discussion with other scholars and stakeholders in the field of African literary and expressive cultures and cultural heritage. These ALMEDA Pamphlets will allow us to make public our results more immediately than we can through formal academic publishing.
We will also be engaging in more traditional publications, all of which will be full open access and will be made available on our results page.
While we are building our searchable data repository, we will also be publishing some of our preliminary data sets here, since these may be useful even in their raw and unlinked versions. Let us know if you find our datasets helpful or if you have any suggestions, corrections or additions: almeda@uu.se
The ALMEDA pamphlet series is a space for preliminary discussion of the methodological, theoretical or empirical challenges and opportunities of critically investigating and engaging with literary metadata in the field of African Literary Studies.
ALMEDA Pamphlet #1 Ashleigh Harris ‘The Literary Metadata of African Little and Popular Magazines’, January 2024.
All publications of data and articles are open access and can be freely accessed via the links below.
Datasets:
Alfieri, Noemi. ‘Poesia de combate, nouvelle somme de poésie du monde noir, black orpheus: lusophone african literatures and their networks’. Zenodo, 29 January 2025. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14763590.
Harris, Ashleigh. ‘Literary Content in MOTO Magazine, Zimbabwe 1972–1999’. Zenodo, 30 January 2025. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14773072.
Harris, Ashleigh. ‘Literary Content in ZONK! African People’s Pictorial 1949–1964’. Zenodo, 1 February 2025. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14784842.
Hållén, Nicklas. ‘Jalada Literary Magazine: Full Catalogue’. Zenodo, 10 February 2025. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14844153.
Sarkar Nilsson, Eric. ‘Digital Comic Books in Nigeria: Comic Republic’. Zenodo, 31 January 2025. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14782125
Sarkar Nilsson, Eric. ‘South African Sci-fi and Horror: Something Wicked Collection’. Zenodo, 1 February 2025. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14784457.
van Loenen, M., et al. Poets’ Biographical Data: Poetry Africa Festival 1997–2022. Zenodo, 3 Mar. 2025. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14963202
Journal articles:
Harris, Ashleigh. ‘African Literary Metadata and Makerere University’s Library’ Research in African Literatures, vol. 55, no. 1 (Spring 2024). 1–27; https://doi.org/10.2979/ral.00042
‘African Literary Metadata and the Semantic Web’ 16–17 August 2023. Decolonisation and the Archive: Languages and Method in the Digital Era, WiSER, Johannesburg. Ashleigh Harris.
‘Digital Archives, Colonial Classifications, and the Problem of Sustainable Cultural Heritage in South Africa’ 28–31 March 2023. South Africa-Sweden University Forum, University of the Western Cape. Ashleigh Harris and Riaan Oppelt
‘The problem of colonial classification in contemporary African literary metadata’ 6 February 2023. Symposium, Materiality in the Digital Age, Uppsala University. Ashleigh Harris
‘African literary metadata’ 23 November 2022. Seminar at Amazwi: The South African Museum of Literature, Makhanda, South Africa. Ashleigh Harris
‘African Ephemeral Literatures and the Future of the Literary Archive’ 17 March 2022. Fellow’s seminar, Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Studies, Stellenbosch, South Africa. Ashleigh Harris
‘Book Metadata and Africa’s Literary Futures’ 10 March 2022. Seminar at the Department of English, Stellenbosch University. Ashleigh Harris.
‘Linked Open Metadata for African Literary Heritage’. 15-16 February 2024: Symposium African Digital Humanities, African Stories and Agency: University of Ghana – Legon. Ashleigh Harris
‘Poetry Africa Digital Map: An example of how selective and curated digitisation of ephemeral material in collections can enable new pathways of knowledge production’ 15-16 February 2024: Symposium African Digital Humanities, African Stories and Agency: University of Ghana. Karen Ijumba
‘Wikidata Solutions for Informal Literary Archives’ 15-16 February 2024: Symposium African Digital Humanities, African Stories and Agency: University of Ghana. Ursula Oberst and Ashleigh Harris. Workshop facilitators included Nicklas Hållén, Karen Ijumba and Oulia Makkonen.
‘African Literary Metadata: What? How? Why?’ 23 February 2024: Forum for Africa Studies, Uppsala University. Nicklas Hållén and Ashleigh Harris
‘Wikidata solutions for informal literary archives’ 28 February 2024: Seminar for Students at Leiden University. Ursula Oberst
Round table discussion on ‘Interrogating prose in African Literature’ 22 March 2024: Forms and Formations of African Literature, Uppsala University, Oulia Makkonen, Nicklas Hållén and Ashleigh Harris
‘African Literary Metadata’ 5 April 2024: Lecture to undergraduates on Knowledge Organisation in the Librarian program (Bibliotekarieprogrammet) at Södertörns högskola. Nicklas Hållén and Ashleigh Harris
‘Metareading a Country’ 14 May 2024: ALMEDA Open Seminar 1. Online. Tinashe Mushakavanhu (Oxford University)
Panel: ‘Endangered Cultural Archives of Southern Africa’ 15–17 May 2024: SASUF Sustainability Forum. Malmö, Sweden. Ashleigh Harris, Pedzisai Maedza and Nkululeko Sibanda
‘Introduction to ALMEDA: African Literary Metadata’ 24 May 2024: Kolloquium »Phänomenologie der Digital Humanities« (Sommersemester 2024), Freie Universität, Berlin. Ashleigh Harris
‘The Appropriation of African Literary Labour from Colonial Copyright to Corporate Paywalls’ 6–8 June 2024: DFG Network Towards a History of Work in the Cultural Economy, Getting a fair share? Cultural work under intellectual property regimes. Oslo, Norway. Ashleigh Harris
‘African Literary Metadata: what, why and how?’ 9 July 2024: iSchool/University of Washington, Leiden. Ursula Oberst
‘Afrikaaps and the Literary Archive’ 15 October 2024: ALMEDA Open Seminar 2. Online. Riaan Oppelt (Stellenbosch University)
‘Postcolonial Technopolitics. Radiotelevisions, Audiovisual Archives, and the Return of the Past in Africa (20th and 21st centuries)’ 27 November 2024: ALMEDA Open Seminar 3. Online. Flora Losch (EHESS – L’ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales)
A new dataset is the outcome of a collaboration with the Centre for Creative Arts, UKZN. This dataset includes biographical information on all the poets who performed at the Poetry Africa festival from 1997 to 2022. The dataset builds on data compiled by University of Kwa-Zulu Natal’s Centre for Creative Arts,…
This article provides a case study of the history of the cataloging system at Makerere University Library and discusses how this has come to shape the body of African literature housed there. The article is available as an open access publication. Harris, Ashleigh. “African Literary Metadata and Makerere University’s Library.” Research…
We’re delighted to share the completion of a project carried out by poet and Swahili lecturer (at the Centre for African Studies, Copenhagen University) Lisa Mumbi Macharia. This dataset documents over 10 years of spoken word poetry performances in the city of Nairobi. Mumbi recorded 628 performances from between March…
Click here to read more about our activities in 2024