Coloniality and Communications: British Telecommunications in Mesopotamia in the Early 20th Century is an AHRC funded project run by Dr. Burçe Çelik (P.I.), Dr. Sebastian James Rose (Research Asssociate) at Loughborough University and artist Sena Başöz.
An introduction video to the project
Coloniality and Communications unveils the historical role and legacy of British telecommunications in the making of colonial spatiality in Mesopotamia and the Middle East in the early 20th century. The project aims to advance decolonial research on media and communications through the epistemological force of regional and geopolitical history.
By providing historical research on the past of colonial communications, this project aims to shift Westcentric conceptions, theoretical frameworks and received histories on media and communications. Focusing on the interplay of communications and state building in Mesopotamia and Iraq from 1918 to 1932, the project challenges and questions existing paradigms in communication studies and the history of technology by asking:
How were communications repurposed by the local people as forms of resistance?
What roles did communications networks play in the making of colonial and national space?
How did communications infrastructures, technologies and networks produce and reproduce colonial violence and control?