In Lagos, memorials of disasters are unkempt and often unnoticed. What might they tell us about the character of the state and public commemoration?
memory
Memory, Attic Research, and a Family Legacy
On writing a family food memoir.
Reading Complaints
What might a letter of complaint to a university truth commission reveal about Brazil’s political climate and the multiple lives of documents?
Haunting Democracy
It’s difficult to imagine being haunted in a public space. Regarded from outside, public spaces usually evoke the gathering of large numbers of people; regarded from within, their occupants often do not recognize the space as anything special at all. However, consider public space in post-Soviet contexts, where it continues to be haunted by the machinations of totalitarianism and is always already haunted by histories of surveillance and violent state power, despite nearly three decades of democracy.
My Path to the Archaeology of Child Migrants
The Undocumented Migration Project (UMP) is a long-term anthropological study of undocumented migration between Mexico and the United States that uses ethnography, archaeology, and forensic science to better understand this clandestine social process. Children are often set aside when talking or thinking about such an “adult” issue, yet they are still subjected to the same socio-political forces as adults. Part of Nicole Smith’s research project, involves the voices of those who migrated when they were children.
