Women-dominated popular professions in urban Africa – from midwives to tailors, hairdressers, aestheticians, wedding singers or market vendors – remain understudied. In several of these professions, notions such as a fixed price for services and steady working hours or workplaces did not apply. The ERC project WomatWork will carry out the first comparative investigation into the history of these professions in Ghana, Sudan, Tanzania and Ethiopia between 1919 and 1970. The project will uncover the peculiarities of these labour patterns considering their historical transformations as a result of political changes and the introduction of new technologies and commodities. WomatWork will examine the professional subjectivities of women at work and investigate the relationship between professionals and their communities.
CREATIVE METHODOLOGIES / 1st conference – Online / ERC Women At Work
WEBINAR / CONFERENCE
CREATIVE METHODOLOGIES
Writing the stories of working women from popular classes in African urban milieux, 1920 — 1970
8th to 10th January 2024
Venue: Room 100, Ground floor, Centre des Colloques, Campus Condorcet, Place du Front populaire, Aubervilliers (Metro : Front Populaire) Aubervilliers.
Zoom link: https://cnrs.zoom.us/j/96456641290?pwd=blNkWUtjWnRhV3FUclQwZS9hUDJmUT09
Web site: https://womatwork.hypotheses.org/conference-programme
Program in pdf: ERC_Conf_Creative MethodologiesVF_6dic23Zoom
This conference marks the start of the ERC WOMEN AT WORK – for a comparativ history of women’s professions in Africa (1920-1970), directed by Elena Vezzadini (CNRS, IMAF, Paris).
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Day 1. Monday, 8th January 2024
9:00 – 9:45 Welcome and presentation of the project
9:45 – 10:45 Noor Nieftagodien, University of Witwatersrand
South Africa, Social History and the Recovery of Women’s Experiences in History
Break
11:00 – 12:00 Mahassin Abdel Galil, EHESS, Paris
Sudanese Women’s History through Biographies and Microhistory: Implicit Methodological Challenges
12:00 – 13:00 Akosua Darkwah, University of Ghana
The River of Life as an Interview Method
Lunch (IMAF, Bâtiment de recherches sud, 3rd floor, room n. 3.122)
14:30 – 15:30 Danielle Van den Heuvel, University of Amsterdam
What can the Early Modern do for You? Uncovering Ephemeral Activities on Everyday City Life using the Snapshot Method
15:30 – 16:30 Darren Newbury, University of Brighton
Historical Photographs and Photographic Histories: Methodological Reflections on Research in Photographic Archives of Africa
Break
16:45 – 17:30 Karin Pallaver, University of Bologna
ERC Research Project: Ayahs in Kenya: a Preliminary Exploration of Themes and Sources”
Day 2. Tuesday, 9th January 2024
9:00 – 10:00 Felix Meier zu Selhausen, Utrecht University
Gender Inequality and urban Elite Formation: New Insights from Parish Registers in British Colonial Africa
10:00 – 11:00 Filipa Ribeiro da Silva, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam
Searching for African Women’s Urban Occupations in Colonial Censuses: Preliminary Reflections and Comparisons
Break
11:15 – 12:15 Tim Gibbs, University of Paris Nanterre
The Widows of Warwick Junction Pavement Markets (Durban, South Africa): Studying Commercial Networks in a Time of Crisis
12:15 – 13:00 Domenico Cristofaro, University of Bologna
ERC Research Project: Creative Mobilities: Introductory Thoughts on Migration, Infrastructure Development and Market Traders in Colonial Northern Ghana
Lunch (IMAF, Bâtiment de recherches sud, 3rd floor, room n. 3.122)
14:30 – 15:30 Salvatory Nyanto, University of Dar es Salaam
Women, Brewing and Urban Professionalism in Twentieth-Century Tabora, Western Tanzania, 1930-1970
15:30 – 16:15 Alma Simba, EHESS, Paris
PhD ERC Research Project: Women’s Resistance and Informal Labour in Dar es Salaam, 1950-1985
Break
16:30 – 17:15 Daniel Worku Kebede, EHESS, Paris
PhD ERC Research Project: A History of Women in the Informal Sectors in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (1886 -1991): the Case of Weavers and Potters
17:15 – 18:00 Juliet Tiwaah Adu Boahen, EHESS, Paris
PhD ERC Research Project: Wayside Female Dressmakers: A Historical Analysis of Cultural, Economic and Social Impacts of Dressmaking in the Gold Coast and Ghana, 1919-1970
Day 3. Wednesday, 10th January 2024
9:00 – 10:00 Emma Hunter, University of Edinburgh
Swahili Language Newspapers and the History of Urban Working Women in Mid-twentieth-century Tanzania
10:00 – 11:00 Elara Bertho, Laboratoire Afriques dans le Monde, Bordeaux
Can Literature Rescue History? Paradoxes in Subalterns’ Voices (Guinea, 1970s)
Break
11:15 – 12:15 Heather Sharkey, University of Pennsylvania
The Guide to Modern Cooking’: Tracing the History of Sudanese Women’s Domestic Labor Through a Home Economics Textbook
12:15 – 13:00 Mariam Sharif, EHESS, Paris
“PhD Research Project: The History of Nursing: Education, Practices and Political Participation in Sudan from 1899-1970s”
Lunch (IMAF, Bâtiment de recherches sud, 3rd floor, room n. 3.023)
14:30 – 15:30 Tirsit Sahledengle, University of Addis Ababa and Meron Zeleke, University of Addis Ababa
Understanding the History of Female Employment in the Textile Industry in Ethiopia; the Value of Anthropological Methods
15:30 – 16:15 Pierre Guidi, IRD, Paris and Tirsit Sahledengle, University of Addis Ababa
ERC Research Project: Discourses ‘From Within’ versus Discourses ‘About’? The Work of Ethiopian ‘Traditional’ Midwives in the Press and in their Own Testimonies (1970s)
Break
16:30 – 17:15 Anne Hugon, University of Paris 1
“ERC Research Project: Documenting the History of Birth Attendants versus Documenting the History of Registered Midwives in the Gold Coast/Ghana: some Preliminary Reflections on Sources”
17:15 – 18:00 Elena Vezzadini, Institut des Mondes Africains, Paris
ERC Research Project: Only Shadows of Traces: Studying Hairdressers and Estheticians in Colonial and Early Colonial Sudan
Photography in highlight: Female cheese vendor, Shendi railway station, Sudan SAD A8/212, 1936 – W. Nicholls collection. Courtesy of the Sudan Library, University of Durham, UK.
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Secrétaire Scientifique (11 décembre 2023). CREATIVE METHODOLOGIES / 1st conference – Online / ERC Women At Work. UN ŒIL SUR LA CORNE / AN EYE ON THE HORN. Consulté le 17 janvier 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/mlzq



