Femke van Zeijl nominated for Volkskrant IISG Thesis Award

African Studies MA alumna Femke van Zeijl has been nominated for the Volkskrant IISG Thesis Award 2021 for her thesis 'The Curious Case of Casa do Fernandez: Challenges of Heritage Management in Nigeria’. The thesis award of Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant and the International Institute of Social History is yearly presented to a student who has written an excellent thesis about a - national or international - historical subject, and that stands out for its innovative subject or approach. Van Zeijl is one of three nominees; the winner will be announced on 24 March. 

Summary
Casa do Fernandez or Ilojo Bar was a National Monument in the heart of Lagos Island, Nigeria. It was built by the Africans who had returned from Brazil after it abolished slave trade in 1850. They came back to the homeland as skilled craftsmen, and their architecture changed the face of Lagos. Although Casa do Fernandez was a National Monument and should have been protected under Nigerian heritage law, it was illegally demolished on 11 September 2016. How could a monumental building with such heritage be bulldozed in broad daylight? This thesis explores the challenges of heritage management in Nigeria by using Casa do Fernandez as a case study. In the process it tries to figure out why there is so little knowledge about the history of a building declared a National Monument over sixty years ago.

Archival research in the Lagos Land Registry, colonial records in the UK, and the personal documents of Nigerian nationalist Herbert Macaulay revealed a history remarkably different from the one often told. It connects traditional Yoruba kings, Brazilian master builders, and Lagosian political thinkers, as well as a Spanish migrant from the impoverished region of Galicia looking for greener pastures abroad, to the monument.

After researching its history, the focus turns to the building's heritage. Could the way Casa do Fernandez has been interpreted as heritage have something to do with its tragic destruction? This thesis argues that the rigid definition of Casa do Fernandez as strictly Afro-Brazilian heritage detached the site of its cultural meaning to other groups in society and sowed the seeds of its eventual downfall. Therefore, the thesis advocates a more inclusive interpretation of this heritage-site in particular and is a plea to decolonise definitions of heritage in general.