EIHS Lecture: Imagine Lagos: Rethinking the Histories of West African Cities in the Nineteenth Century

Urban questions have taken on a new urgency, as cities like Lagos grow faster and more intensely, seemingly every day. But how should we understand the ways the past shaped and produced this present? And how can, or should we, write and map the histories of people rooted in oral cultures? This presentation explores the premise that reading Lagos’s streets shapes the ways to ask, analyze and frame nineteenth-century narratives of the city. By drawing new maps of Lagos and the lagoon, I transcribe the answers to these questions as they were understood and framed in the city’s social geography.

Trained as both historian and computer engineer, Ademide’s research into the history of West African cities combines a set of interdisciplinary interests in maps, mapmaking, and digital humanities. Her first book, Imagine Lagos, explores the city’s 19th-century history. It was awarded the Best Book Prize in 2024 by the African Studies Association and is a finalist for the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora’s Outstanding First Book award. She a founding member of the Lagos Studies Association, and is Associate Professor of History at Howard University (where she is also a faculty affiliate of the Black Data Lab).

This event presented by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible in part by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.