Representations of life stories about Nigeria through the lenses of the CMS Missionaries in the XIX century

Faculty Member Name: Paul E. Lovejoy
Faculty Member email: plovejoy@yorku.ca
Department/School: Department of History
Project Title: Representations of life stories about Nigeria through the lenses of the CMS Missionaries in the XIX century

Description of Research Project:

This project will explore the representations of places, people, and lifestyles derived from missionaries about Nigeria and its people publish by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in its Gleaner and Intelligencer in the nineteenth century. This project contributes to the corpus of life stories of people who were subjected to the transatlantic slave trade. The CMS records enable the reconstruction of the life stories of many individuals, many of whom were first settled in Sierra Leone as Liberated Africans and served periods of apprenticeship that resulted in many being assigned to the CMS missions. After their apprenticeship they were repatriated to their homelands located in what it is today Nigeria as missionaries. The images, photos and artwork found in the CMS publications provide a rich source of documentation that will help to contextualize the events and accounts of Africa. The DARE Recipient will play a key role in revising, collecting, classifying, and building a repository. The recipient will work with Professor Lovejoy and the team of researchers that are building the Digital Humanities project, Freedom Narratives.

Undergraduate Student Responsibilities:

The DARE student will be responsible for:
-Collating newspapers and other CMS materials related to the topic
-Identifying photos, images and other relevant materials that relate to life stories in the newspapers
-Classify the images and life stories and create an inventory with codes and references
-Develop methods of representation of materials, including a poster display and a page for images on the existing website.
-Report and work closely with the project Supervisor and his research team

Qualifications Required:

The undergraduate student must have experience in writing, organising data, and research skills in History/Social Science. It is also desired that the student knows African History and Digital Humanities techniques or has interest in the subject. The student will be trained and gain expertise in best practices and database construction.

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