Events

Sponsored by the African Urban Dynamics CRG under the auspices of AEGIS, the workshop series "Teaching African Cities" features scholars and teachers who focus on African cities. Organized around a series of themes, these workshops are intended to build on and complement each other, creating a space to share resources and ideas among both seasoned instructors and individuals who are new to the classroom. The workshops are unified through a shared commitment to centering African experiences and expertise and promoting an ethical approach to community engagement in teaching courses about African cities.

This session explores strategies for experiential learning in African cities, based on three different teaching programs. The aim is to explore different practical and pedagogical dimensions of three approaches: 

• the first examines how partnership can enable an embodied engagement with the city through a research studio run by the African Centre for Cities and the University of Basel (Nancy Odendaal);
• the second reflects on the piloting of a new urban planning curriculum at the University of Zambia working with Shack-Slum Dweller International affiliates in Lusaka (Gilbert Siame);
• the third presents an urban humanities research studio in Lamu, Kenya, run by the University of Basel with local community-based organisation Lamu Youth Alliance as an immersive 6-week research experience (Maren Larsen; Ruth Lozi). 

The discussion (moderated by Kenny Cupers) will unpack what it means to engage the experience of those in the classroom, and the diverse relationships (of epistemologically and geographical distances and proximities) that straddle the class room and the African city.