All posts by Eric Morier-Genoud

Prof. Harold W. Rodgers

QUB & Africa

With no prior connection to Africa, Professor Harold W. Rodgers developed a keen and personal connection with the continent after moving to Queen’s University.

Born in India, Harold Rodger was the first Englishman to hold the chair in Surgery at Queen’s which he took up in 1947. In 1950 and 1951 he did a tour of West Africa for the Colonial Office and the Nuffield Foundation, from which he built personal links to Africa.

After 1950 Professor Rodgers maintained a keen interest in African affairs and looked after the African students at Queen’s University, no least the future Professor Akin O. Adesola (Queen’s first African Honoris Causa in 1989).

After his retirement in 1974, Prof. Rodger took up a post at the University of Ife, Nigeria, for three years – four years before Adesola became the Vice-Chancellor of the same institution.

Workshop “Africa in Ireland / Ireland in Africa”

11 May 2017, Trinity College, Dublin

Ireland in Africa2017

 1.     Africans in Ireland      

 09.30.   Bill Hart (Ulster University):   ‘American sources for a black presence in nineteenth-century Ireland’

 09.50. Eric Morier-Genoud (Queen’s University Belfast):  ‘Cosmopolitan Belfast? Africans and Africa at Queen’s University, 1941-1971’

10.10.  Abel Ugba (University of East London):  ‘Identity, belonging and media use by Irish Africans’

2.  African Studies in Ireland [A]

11.15.  Laura Brown (Maynooth University): ‘“They were a greasy, downtrodden lot”: Egypt and the perception of Egyptians in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan 1899-1956’

11.35.  Roger Boulter:  ‘Target Pretoria – Dieter Gerhardt and the Soviet penetration of the South African Defence Force’

11.55. Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses (Maynooth University),  ‘From metropolitan revolution to colonial exodus:  The fall of Portuguese Angola, 1974-5’
 

3.  African Studies in Ireland [B]

13.45.   Michelle D’Arcy (Trinity College Dublin): ‘The historical antecedents and contemporary political impact of devolution in Kenya’

14.05. Padraig Carmody (Trinity College Dublin): ‘The geopolitics and economics of BRICS resource and market access in Southern Africa’

4. The Irish and Africa: Connections and reflections

14.45.  David Dickson (Trinity College Dublin): ‘The missionary motorist: Thomas Gavan Duffy’s Africa crossing, 1927-8’

15.05. Ailish Veale (Trinity College Dublin): ‘Irish Catholic medical missionaries in the development era’

15.25.  Kevin O’Sullivan (NUI Galway): ‘Lessons from Biafra’

15.40.  Tom Lodge (University of Limerick): The Irish Anti-Apartheid movement’

5. Keynote paper

16.30.   Donal McCracken (University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban):  ‘The retreat down Africa. The Irish in Africa – Colonial running dogs or harbingers of change?’