“Most Rev. Dominic Ekandem, auxiliary Bishop of Calabar, Nigeria, with African students after he preached the sermon at the Academic High Mass in the chapel of Aquinas Hall, Belfast, 1959” published in The Gown, Vol.6, No.3, 6 November 1959, p.1
THURSDAY 12 September 2019
1,00pm. Welcome & Introduction
1,30pm Opening lecture I .
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Andrew Holmes, “‘Where have the Protestants gone?’ The Irish Protestant missionary experience, 1790-1914.”
2.00pm – Panel One “Green and Orange”
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Matteo Binasco, “Whenever Green is Worn: The Holy See and Irish Catholic Missionary Movement in the Nineteenth Century.”
Declan O’Doherty & Aglaia de Angeli, “From novice in Newchwang to Minister in Manchuria. A discussion of the early experiences of the Presbyterian missionary Rev. Alexander Crawford in Manchuria, 1895-1913.”
Alannah Jeune, “Complexities of identity: Juvenile Mission literature in the Presbyterian Church of Ireland”
4.00pm – Opening lecture II .
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Colin Barr,“The Children of the Household’: Irish Catholic Missionaries and Indigenous Populations in the Settler Empire, 1815-1914.”
4,30pm Reception
FRIDAY 13 September 2019
9,30am – Panel Two “Great Works…”
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Jamelyn B. Palattao, “James A. Greig of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland (PCI): Mission, Humanitarianism and Diplomacy in China.”
Eric Morier-Genoud, “Donal Lamont. A (northern) Irish Bishop in Africa?”
Barry Sheppard, “‘The great cannot exist without the small; nor the small without the great.’ Catholic Action in Ireland and Abroad 1932-49.”
11-12,30 – Panel Three “Home and Abroad”
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Sarah Roddy, “Temporary missionaries: or, how the ‘spiritual empire’ changed Catholic Ireland”
Stuart Mathieson, “Irish Missions, Science, and Scripture in the Holy Land”
Fiona Bateman, “Echoes of Irish history in Eastern Nigeria: Cultural loss and conflict”
12,30 Lunch
2, 00-3,30 – Penal Four “Exhibition, Text and Photographs”
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Denis Linehan, “‘A Stuffed Gold Coast Monkey’: Exhibiting Irish-Africa in the Missionary Exhibitions in 20th Century Ireland.”
Justin Livingstone, “Writing Mission: Empire, Decolonisation and the Qua Iboe”
Fiona Loughnan, “The Album and the Archive: Migratory Photo-Objects and Irish Spiritan Missions in Kenya”
4,00pm Concluding remarks
Full Programme – download here
Ugandan students came to Stranmillis college from 1963. All were women and came under a scheme of their government to promote women in society. From 1967 men were also included – in 1969 there were thirteen women and seven men.
This picture must be 1963, 1964 or 1965.
See: Roland Marshall, Stranmillis College Belfast, 1922-1972 (Belfast, 1972), pp.53-4
Born in Assang Eniong, Cross Rivers State, Nigeria, Mary Ekpiken arrived in Belfast in 1953. She came to study economics with a Nigerian government grant. She resided at Riddel Hall until she graduated in 1955.
After Queen’s, Mary returned to Africa to work for the Nigerian Civil Service. In 1965, she was Senior Labour Officer within the Employment Division of the Federal Ministry of Labour in Lagos.
She continued in the Ministry until she retired on 18 May 1984 as a director in the ministry. She was the first woman to reach such position in Nigeria and was awarded a Nigeria National Honour (OFR).
She passed away in 2010, leaving behind an adult son, Tunji Roberts, who is a media entrepreneur in the United State. Tunjo visited Belfast on his mother’s traces in November 2012, and saw the small dossier the QUB archives hold of her mother. 
Martin Lynn was born in 1951 in Nigeria. He studied at King’s College London and SOAS. After a stint at the University of Ilorin, he was recruited at Queen’s in 1980. He taught there British and Imperial history and, with time, African and Chinese history. He was the first to teach a course on African history at Queen’s.
His area of academic interest was the economic history of West Africa. His first monograph was Commerce and Economic Change in West Africa: the Palm Oil Trade in the 19th century (Cambridge University Press, 1997). The book was very well received and it established Lynn in the field at once. He published extensively on cognate subjects as well, in the very best journals of his field (Journal of African History, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, African Economic History, etc. – see a full bibliography here). In 2001, he edited two volumes of the famed British Documents on End of Empire Project on Nigeria (Part I: Managing Political Reform. 1943-53, cix 643 pp.; Part II: Moving to Independence. 1953-60).
Martin Lynn was promoted to a professorship in African History in 2002, after more than 20 years in Belfast. He thus became the first chair of African history in Ireland. He remained modest and dedicated to his teaching nonetheless, something he was much appreciated, if not envied for. Prof. Richard Rathbone recently remembered Martin Lynn for his “collegiality, his kindness, his unnecessary modesty, [and] his personal and scholarly integrity”. Professor Martin Lynn passed away unexpectedly in 2005. The second African Studies in Ireland Network colloquium was dedicated to his memory.
“African Studies in Ireland 2018”In memoriam Professor Martin Lynn
Friday 25 May (1-6pm) – Saturday 26 May 2018 (9am-5pm)
Queen’s University Belfast, Senate Room
FRIDAY 25 May 2018
Africa Day
1pm Welcome
Peter Gray, director of the Institute of Irish Studies
Eric Morier-Genoud, organiser
I. Africa, Ireland and Queen’s University, 1,30-3,00pm
3,00-3,30pm coffee
II. History and Historiography of Africa, 3,30-5,00pm
III. KEYNOTE, 5,00-6,00pm
SATURDAY 26 May 2018
IV. Ireland, Africa and Art, 9,30- 11,00
V. Conflict resolution, Peacekeeping and Culture, 11,00-12,30
12,30-14,00 lunch
VI. Hunters and Music in West Africa, 14,00-15,00
VII. Contemporary African issues, 15,00-17,00
Conclusion, 17,00-17,30
Free entry. Please register in advance (for catering purposes) on: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/african-studies-in-ireland-2018-tickets-43315118686
History of Christianity in AfricaBorn in Belfast in 1943, T. Jack Thompson read modern history at Queen’s University before going to Edinburgh for postgraduate studies and a Ph.D. He worked as a missionary in Malawi for 13 years, after which he went to work as a lecturer at Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham. In 1993 he became a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh where he taught African Christianity and eventually became the director of the Center for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World.
An superb historian, Thompson wrote 3 books on Christianity in Malawi (Christianity in Northern Malawi: Donald Fraser’s Missionary Methods and Ngoni Culture, 1995; Touching the heart: Xhosa Missionaries to Malawi, 1876-1888, 2000; and Ngoni, Xhosa and Scot: Religious and Cultural Interactions in Malawi, 2007). His last volume was a particularly well-received volume entitled Light on Darkness: Missionary Photography in Africa in the 19th C and early 20th C (2012).
Thompson passed away in August 2017. Two years before, he contacted me to see whether he could apply for a Queen’s Higher Doctorate. This was possible and we discussed procedure. Somehow Jack did not follow it up. I presume his health got in the way. It was a great pity for this would have been a perfect closing act for a unique student from Queen’s who went on to have a distinguished academic career “across the water” in the history of Africa.
“Sounding violence. Music, Ritual & Poetry in Contemporary West Africa”
Workshop organised by Dr Theodore Konkouris & Dr Eric Morier-Genoud, Queen’s University Belfast, 27 October 2017
Session I. Ambiguity, Aggression and Presentation in Hunters’ Brotherhoods
(Chair: Dr Eric Morier-Genoud)
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10:00-11:00 Dr. Theodore Konkouris (QUB)
“I am sorry that we made you bleed”: Locality and Apprenticeship among the Mande Hunters in Mali’
11:00-12:00 Dr. Lorenzo Ferrarini (Manchester)
‘Re-sounding hierarchies: music, visual display and aggression at donso hunter gatherings in Burkina Faso’
Session II: Poetry and Conflict
(Chair: Dr. Theodore Konkouris)
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13:00-14:00 Dr. Mohomodou Houssouba (University of Basel)
‘Conflict in writing: the poetics of lyrics in Songhoy Blues’
14:00-16:30 FILM projection: ‘They will have to kill us first’ (2015, 1h 45m)
Introduction by Dr Alexander Fisher
First African student in History at QUBBorn in Ekiti state in 1921, Nigerian student Joshua Adeware Alokan arrived at Queen’s University in 1957. He was the first African student in the departement of History, coming with a Nigerian Federal Scholarship. He graduated in 1961 and chose not to continue with graduate studies. Instead he chose (in spite of available funding) to return to Nigeria to work for his church. He developped thereafter a most successful carreer as a pastor for the Christ Apostolic Church in Nigeria and as a lecturer in several Teacher Colleges – becoming the principal of the Divisional Teachers’ College in Oye Ekiti and Erifun for 22 years. He passed away in 2015. Attached is the cover of the celebration book for his funeral (courtesy of his son, Dr Olusegun P. Alokan, senior lecturer at Joseph Ayo Babaloal University, Nigeria). Joshua Alokan wrote several books, among which Idasile ati Idagba soke Ijo CAC Nilu Efon (1975); The Christ Apostolic Church, 1928-88 (1991), Church Worship (1996); The Origin, Growth and Development of Efon-Alaaye Kingdom (2004); Christ Apostolic Church at 90 (2010); and Medaiyese: A Patriarch and Promoter of Pentecostalism in Nigeria (2014). He also wrote his own memoirs entitled Cradle and Beyond: an autobiography (2000). For more on his life, see his obituary on Queen’s website: https://daro.qub.ac.uk/pages/2016-rebrand/news/obits—all/obits—joshua-adeware
John Blacking was Professor of anthroplogly at Queen’s University between 1969 and 2000. After a BA degree under Prof. Meyer Fortes at King College and Cambridge, he moved to South Africa to work with the famous Prof. Hugh Tracey. He did there a PhD (with a dissertation on Venda music), then obtained a lectureship and eventually a professorship at the University of Witwatersrand.
In 1969, after problems with the Apartheid administration, he moved to Queen’s University Belfast to take up the first chair of Anthropology in Ireland. He remained there until his passing away in 2000, supervising tens of students, many of whom Africans who subsequently returned to their country to develop musicology there (e.g. Prof. Joshua Uzoigwe).
For more on Blacking, see: http://era.anthropology.ac.uk/Era_Resources/Era/VendaGirls/Introduction/I_Blacking.html