Making a Ritual Geology in Savannah West Africa ca. 800-1900 AD (Yale Agrarian Studies)
Robyn d’Avignon is an historian and anthropologist of West Africa, with interests in natural resource extraction, scientific research, and state formation. Her first book manuscript—Shadow Geology: The Search for Subterranean Knowledge West Africa—examines the pre-colonial and colonial roots of conflicts over mineral discovery and property rights in the context of an ongoing gold mining boom in savannah West Africa. Robyn conducted research for this project in Senegal, Mali, Guinea, and France with funding from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. At NYU, Robyn teaches courses on African history for all time periods, humanitarianism, decolonization, nature and technology, and on New York as an African city.
The Agrarian Studies Program presents a weekly colloquium organized around an annual theme. Invited specialists send papers in advance that are the focus of an organized discussion by the faculty and graduate students associated with the colloquium.
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