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Summer School: Understanding Nigerian Cultures
University of Ibadan (Nigeria)
Organized by the office of international programs
The Office of International Programmes, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, in conjunction with the Institute of African Studies and the Department of Linguistics and African Languages, University of Ibadan, is pleased to announce the call for applications for the 2018 Summer School on Understanding Nigerian Cultures for undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as research scholars, in all subject areas interested in enhancing their understanding of the Nigerian cultures and languages. Cultures are resources and interpretations of reality, and diversities present opportunities that expand the options available to humanity as assets and common patrimony with Africa’s rich cultural and linguistic diversities matching if not surpassing its rich and diverse flora, fauna and geo-formations. Indeed, Africa constitutes a unique opportunity for rediscovering our
humanity through, for example, an understanding of African modes of negotiating spaces and identities. These African modes provide a viable response to the contemporary need for new modes of understanding and analysing who we are as humans, our symbolisms, and our diversities. No doubt, this need has become more urgent in the face of the new global political, ideological and business realities.
Against the backdrop of a lot of misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the authentic nature of African cultures by many scholars and students across Europe, the US and other parts of the world, the summer school, using Nigeria as a case study, provides an opportunity for a direct experience of some of the key aspects of the diverse cultures of Nigeria. Indeed, Nigeria despite being one of the most diverse in terms of languages and cultures appears to be one of the least understood and studied.
A primary focus of the programme is to expose participants to important aspects of Nigerian cultures and languages in ways that will achieve the following objectives:
Expose participants to the reality of cultural diversity in Nigeria.
Use Nigeria as a canvass to generate sensitivity to diversity and an understanding of
homogeneity.
Expose participants to how to allocate, share and negotiate spaces from the perspective of
indigenous Nigerian cultures.
Culture as dynamic, in formation, flux, transition and transformation
