Archaeology Research

We are really pleased to welcome our new colleague, Dr Ugwuani to Archaeology. Kelechi joined us on the 1^st April and will be working across both Archaeology and Information studies. He tells us a bit about himself:

“I am a trained archaeologist specialising in heritage and museum studies. I take a critical heritage studies approach to explore the intersectionality of heritage and decolonisation, museum, cultural landscape, more-than-human ontologies, indigenous knowledge systems, and contemporary archaeology. I am particularly interested in questioning the epistemics of coloniality in heritage and museum studies and practices, and the ways it energises identity politics and hegemony that exclude and create inequality and injustice, especially in and against Africa and Africans in diaspora.

I started engaging these topics in my PhD thesis, which explored the negotiation between “global” heritage discourses and “local” belief and value systems in non-Western societies using the case study of Otobo/Ama Obodo/Ezi/Ọfụ - the Igbo village arena or ‘square’, a cultural and historical landscape found at the center of villages across communities in Eastern Nigeria. I engaged modern Western conceptualisations of heritage based on notions of pastness, decay, endangerment, and loss aversion, questioning the divisions between past and present, culture and nature, human and nonhuman, and material and non-material. I have continued researching and publishing around these issues through different research projects, such as Posthumanism or animism? The Anthropocene problem and African heritage ontologies; Dissonant heritage and ontological ambivalence; Heritage, territory and adaptation/resistance to global threat; Human-nature relationships, extractivism and the Anthropocene, etc.

I hold a PhD in Archaeology-Heritage Studies, an MA and BA in Archaeology and Tourism, and a Diploma in Tourism and Museum Studies. I was trained in Nigeria and the UK, worked in Nigeria and Germany, and have conducted research in all these countries, including France. My research engagements take a transdisciplinary approach involving anthropology, heritage studies, archaeology, history, environmental studies, and geography.

I joined the University of Glasgow as a lecturer in archaeology and museum studies at the School of Humanities, where my research and teaching would cut across Archaeology, Information Studies (focusing on museum studies), and the Beniba Centre for Slavery Studies”.

 

 

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First published: 13 May 2025