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Case Studies

New postdoc to catalogue Khangas

The Khanga/Kanga/Leso is a traditional cotton cloth with mixed designs, colors and messages worn by women along the coastal regions of Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar. The popularization of the Khanga can be traced back to 1887, when the Kaderdina family founded the Hajee Essak Limited company, which pioneered the mass…

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Sankoré Magazine, Mali

La revue malienne _Sankoré_ pourrait être considérée comme reflétant un processus de valorisation des langues et littératures africaines dans le cadre du projet de décolonisation des années 1970. Sankoré – une revue de vulgarisation scientifique avec, entre autres, des sections consacrées aux nouvelles, légendes, proverbes, poèmes, devinettes, est un produit…

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Zonk! African People’s Pictorial

The South African magazine, Zonk! African People’s Pictorial, ran from August 1949 until June 1964, during which time it published 298 literary works, predominantly short stories and photo plays. The rise of the popularity of the photo play in the 1960s is evident in Zonk!, which began publishings 23-page photo…

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Case Study: Zimbabwean Theatre Manuscripts

In August 2023, Ashleigh Harris partnered with ALMEDA researcher Pedzisai Maedza (University College Dublin), Nkululeko Sibanda (University of Pretoria), and Kelvin Chikonzo (University of Harare) to catalogue the manuscript collection of Rooftop Productions’ Theatre in the Park, directed by Daves Guzha. In addition to cataloguing the 253 manuscripts in Rooftop…

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Database

Data modelling: Edi Ganzel’s serialised Swahili novels

Edi Ganzel was a prolific writer of serialised novels in late 1960s and early 1970s Tanzania. Ursula Oberst has been using his work in Kenyan magazine Taifa Weekly to model serialised fiction in our metadata ontology. Give her feedback and see her current modelling on our Wikidata project site. Image:…

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Collaboration: Poetry Africa

Poetry Africa is an annual international poetry festival curated and presented by the Centre for Creative Arts at the University of Kwazulu-Natal in Durban each year during October. The festival features Spoken Word & Publish Poets in performances and dynamic engagements which includes panel discussions, campus and school visits, poetry exchanges, book…

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Events

Lecture: Flora Losch on West African audiovisual archives

Join us for the next lecture in the ALMEDA seminar series! Flora Losch (EHESS – Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) will present her research on West African audiovisual archives – past and present. The lecture will be held on Zoom Time and Date: Wednesday 27 November, 13:15-14:45 CEST,…

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Lecture: Afrikaaps and the Literary Archive, Riaan Oppelt

On Tuesday 15 October, our case-study researcher Riaan Oppelt (Stellenbosch University) gave a lecture on his ALMEDA case-study material. You can watch the lecture here:

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ALMEDA Kick-Off Meeting, 13–14 May 2024

ALMEDA was officially launched with a meeting of all team members and some of the members of our distinguished advisory board. We were also joined by Tinashe Mushakavanhu, who presented a lecture titled ‘Metareading a Country’, in which he spoke about the value of “rogue archival” methods, which create “interference”…

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Events: African Digital Humanities Symposium, Accra 15-16 February 2024

ALMEDA is proud to co-sponsor this year’s African Digital Humanities Symposium, Digital Humanities, African Stories and Agency organised by Brian Rosenblum and James Yékú of the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Kansas. The ALMEDA team will also partner with Karen Ijumba (Poetry Africa, Open…

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