Professor Ola Ola Uduku PhD M.Phil MSc BSc MBA PgCert

Research Overview

ACADEMIC ACTIVITY 2020/21

RESEARCH AND RKE FUNDING

BRITISH ACADEMY GRANT £16,924.00. P.I. WW20200233 Writing West African University Campus Modernism: Joint Ghana-Nigeria Workshop – involving Universities in Ghana, Nigeria, and in association with the Goethe Institute in Germany
PROJECT CODE: F-10056.
The lack of indigenous African writers involved in writing African architectural history is a major problem, despite the development of the field over the past two decades. This workshop seeks to develop the writing skills of young Ghanaian and Nigerian architecture research students to write critically in academic and contemporary media about the history and their direct experience of African university campus architecture. West African universities provide amongst the best examples of Africa’s modernist architectural heritage and remain formally undocumented. This workshop seeks to enable early career researchers to acquire appropriate writing skills and subsequently commence writing the architectural history of Lagos and Ghana University campuses, which will become a legacy project for early career researcher architectural historians, planners, and urbanists at both institutions. The joint-campus workshops use the peer-to-peer mentoring process based on past ASAUK-associated BA-funded writing workshops in 2018 and 2019.
Weblink: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/projects/writing-west-african-university-campus-modernism-joint-ghana-nigeria-virtual-workshop/

AFRICAN CITIES RESEARCH CONSORTIUM, ACRC (£32 million over 5 yrs*) Nigerian West African Cities Consultant
PROJECT CODE: 173600 (ARCHITECTURE-Consultancies)
The African Cities Research Consortium is an £13million FCDO funded research project led by Professor Diana Mitlin at the Global Development Institute (GDI) at the University of Manchester. Its aim is to research into the problems of city governance and planning in Africa. This is a five-year project studying 13 cities in Africa and working with local government and other actors to socio-economic institute change in local governance. I am named as a co-investigator and am part of the Strategic Governance Group and have specific oversight over research being undertaken about the city of Lagos. It responds to a number of the UN sustainable development goals and GCRF themes, related to cities, good governance and facilities provision in the global South. I am directly involved in researching West African cities; Lagos, Maiduguri, Freetown and Accra are in the the consortium’s research remit. This research has the potential to provide material for a future impact case study on African urban research. I have already successfully completed the Lagos scoping analysis and we have completed phase one of the project.
Weblinks:
https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/32-million-for-african-cities-research/
https://www.iied.org/african-cities-research-consortium