Fieldwork

One of the main objectives of the [Re:]Entanglements project has been to bring copies of the photographs and sound recordings made by Northcote Thomas in Nigeria and Sierra Leone between 1909 and 1915 back to the communities whose heritage they document. Retracing the routes of Thomas’s 110-year-old anthropological survey itineraries, it has been a great privilege to be able to reunite community members with photographs of their great-grandparents and play the sounds of their ancestors’ voices.

We have learnt a huge amount about the histories, personalities and culture documented in the ethnographic archive, and have been delighted to help communities start their own oral history projects based around the archives.

In time we will be creating a new part of the project website devoted to sharing more of the stories we have gathered. In the meanwhile, here are a few photographs documenting some of our activities.

A few stories from our fieldwork: