Permanent URL: https://colonialcommunication.lboro.ac.uk/interviews/interview-with-nnamdi-nnake/
Title: Coloniality and Communications: Interview with Nnamdi Nnake
Creator: Sebastian James Rose
Contributors: Nnamdi Nnake
Data Provider: Loughborough University
Provider: Coloniality and Communications
Type: Sound
Format: Sound (MP3)
Is Shown At: https://colonialcommunication.lboro.ac.uk/interviews/interview-with-nnamdi-nnake/
Date: 2025
Language: English
Description: This audio interview documents the research of Nnamdi Nnake on the history of the electric telegraph in Nigeria with primary focus on its intersections with material culture and the political economy. The conversation examines Nnamdi’s background, research into Nigerian telecommunications and colonial history, the establishment and reception of telegraph lines in West Africa and the archival source material available to researchers interested in Nigerian and West African communication history.
Subject: African History, Electric telegraph, Colonial media, Communication history, Media and colonialism, Decolonial media studies
Spatial Coverage: Nigeria, West Africa
Temporal Coverage: 19th and 20th century
Rights: CC BY-NC 4.0
Rights Holder: Loughborough University
Is Part Of: Coloniality and Communications – Interviews
Project Context:
Coloniality and Communications: British Telecommunications in Mesopotamia in the Early 20th Century is an AHRC funded project run by Prof. Burçe Çelik (P.I.), Dr. Sebastian James Rose (Research Associate) at Loughborough University and artist Sena Başöz.
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?
This recording was produced as part of the research project Coloniality and Communications: British Telecommunications in Mesopotamia in the Early 20th Century.
Learn more at the project website: https://colonialcommunication.lboro.ac.uk/
Related content can be accessed at https://colonialcommunication.lboro.ac.uk/interviews/