Lotte Hughes is an historian of Africa, empire and postcolonial issues, who specialises in Kenya. She is currently the Principal Investigator of an ESRC funded collaborative project, ‘Cultural Rights and Kenya’s New Constitution’, based at The Open University (UK). Lotte previously led the AHRC-funded research project ‘Managing Heritage, Building Peace: Museums, memorialisation and the uses of memory in Kenya’ (2008-11). This resulted in the book Managing Heritage, Making Peace: History, Identity and Memory in Contemporary Kenya, co-authored with Annie E. Coombes and Karega-Munene (I.B. Tauris, 2014). Her earlier books include Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) and Environment and Empire, co-authored with William Beinart (Oxford University Press, 2007).
Sessions in which Dr Lotte Hughes participates
Monday 6 June, 2016
Time Zone: (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
9:00 -
12:30 |
3 hours 30 minutes
This session will address the potential and limitations of heritage as a tool for leverage, empowerment and dissent in Africa. It is widely acknowledged that heritage—the selective valuation and use of the past in the present—can be an oppressive. Heritage work in Africa has even been characterized as "an instrument for dictatorship" (Peterson et al. 2015:28) because it is often implicated in upholding particular narratives and political orders, imposing a singular vision onto a heterog...