School Design in Africa: Issues and Challenges for 21st Century Learning

Speaker: Ola Uduku, Manchester School of Architecture

Part of the Africa Talks Seminar Series Autumn 2018.

Talks are held in the Danford Room, 2nd floor, Arts Building (R16 on the campus map). 
All welcome. 

• Full seminar programme

Abstract

In this lecture Ola Uduku explores the key issues that influence basic school provision in sub-Saharan Africa and emerging trends which are likely to do so. Developing from the key findings in her recent book: Learning Spaces In Africa; Critical Histories and 21st century Challenges, she explores how key themes such as technology, migration, and the adoption of new learning theories influence contemporary education systems and the design of schools in Africa. As access to education for all children remains a key United Nations Sustainable Development Goal, which most of Africa is yet to attain she argues that developing school design guidelines which respond to these and future themes and trends could make critical contribution to the continent’s future socio-economic development aspirations and targets.

Speaker biography

Ola Uduku, has a Chair in Architectural Research at the Manchester School of Architecture in September 2017. Prior to this she was Reader in Architecture, and Dean International for Africa, at Edinburgh University. Her research specialisms are in the history of educational architecture in Africa, and the contemporary issues related to social infrastructure provision for minority communities in cities in the ‘West’ and ‘South’. She is currently engaged in developing postgraduate research and teaching links in architecture urbanism, heritage and conservation between West African Architecture schools and those in North West England. She is also researching leisure and aid architectural infrastructure in Africa.

She has in the past published in the areas of African Architecture, African Diaspora Studies, Gated Communities, Bagaeen and Uduku, Gated Communities; social sustainability in historic and contemporary Gated Communities, (2010, Earthscan) and Beyond Gated Communites, (2015, Taylor and Francis) respectively. Her most recent book titled: Learning Spaces in Africa: Critical Histories, 21st Century Challenges and Change, has been published this year, in [insert month] 2018. Other recent publications include Uduku O. (2016) “The UNESCO-IDA School Building Programme in Africa: The Nigeria ‘Unity’ Schools, in Designing Schools, Space, Place and Pedagogy”, eds Willis and Darien-Smith, London Taylor and Francis, O. Uduku and I. Jackson ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’ in OUP Companion Volume Architecture & Urbanism in the British Empire, (2016), and Uduku O. et al (2015), Architectural Pedagogy in Kumasi, Baghdad and Szczecin, in Radical Pedagogies Project (eds. Colomina B. and Kotosioris E. Volume 45 (2015) “Learning”.