Research

The Material History Lab currently focuses on Africa’s social, political, economic, and cultural histories through objects. We study the physicality, sociality, and mineral and chemical compositions. We work with different objects and materials, from microscopic elements to monumental buildings and landscapes. Our research team is interested in physical materials and objects in textual, oral, and pictographic sources. We draw inspiration and methodology from diverse disciplines, including history, archaeology, anthropology, art history, museum studies, performance studies, literary studies, physical sciences, and geosciences.

Our ongoing projects include:

• The Chemistry of History: Technology, Mobility, and Trade in West Africa, 400 BC-AD 1830
• Home Life and Domesticity of Governance in the Oyo Empire, West Africa
• Materiality of Early Modernity in the Yoruba World
• History of Food and Foodways in Western Lower Niger since 400 BC
• Animalia in the History of the Oyo Empire
• Death and Immortality in Yoruba History
• Environmental and Climate Histories of the Oyo Empire
• Landscape History of Osun-Osogbo Grove (A World Heritage Site), Nigeria
• Public Educational Engagement: Virtual and Augmented Realities of African Material Culture and History

We are open to students seeking research opportunities in the Material History Lab. These research opportunities are open to every Northwestern University student. The entry point to student research in the lab is as elastic as the student’s imagination. In one of our current projects, “The Chemistry of History,” students are using instrumentation techniques to build an archive of the chemical and mineral compositions of various artifacts in the lab. This archive will be invaluable for understanding technology, mobility, and trade in early African history. In another instance, a student may want to do short documentaries on the stories behind any object or collection of objects in the lab or use their statistics skills to analyze some of the data collected on the objects. If you are that student, please direct all inquiries to ogundiran@northwestern.edu.