From Africa to Ann Arbor to Alabama
Visiting scholars share experiences at Taubman College and Auburn’s Rural Studio.
Taubman College hosted two visiting scholars through the U-M African Presidential Scholars (UMAPS) program for 2024-2025. Clint Abrahams, architect and senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town, and Michael Gameli Dziwornu, geography researcher and lecturer at the University of Ghana, spent the year studying and sharing knowledge with faculty and students, including at events hosted by the college’s Africa Alliance.
In the spring, the scholars shared their work with the community. Dziwornu gave a talk on his extensive research into the social, spatial, and environmental history of an abandoned sugar factory in post-colonial Ghana. The factory and surrounding farm have changed international ownership several times and offer a complex case study to inform more equitable and sustainable developments in the future.
Abrahams hosted an intimate storytelling event in the college’s TVLab, where faculty and students discussed architecture and narrative in marginalized communities, including his home of South Africa. Titled “Ghellie Blik Stories” (shown above) the event was named for the Afrikaans word for a found metal object used to hold a fire for gathering. Gathered around a virtual fire and surrounded by drawings, videos, and texts, guests were invited to informally “talk about the work as if we were friends.” “The language we use around this particular object is important,” Abrahams says. “Back home, to get to the deeper meanings, you can’t talk in a language that is not accessible.”
The scholars also took part in the “Land, Deed, and Debt” (shown below) workshop exploring university campuses in West Africa. The day-long event featured several Taubman College faculty and was held in the commons. “The publicness of it was incredibly moving in the sense that, when we talk about African scholars and what they do, it’s not done in isolation,” Abrahams says.
At the conclusion of their stay, the scholars traveled south to participate in the Society of Architectural Historians conference in Atlanta and visit Auburn University’s Rural Studio, as well as several historic sites from the U.S. civil rights movement, with Professor Łukasz Stanek.
The off-campus design-build studio focuses on social responsibility and sustainability in a historically low-income rural region of Alabama. Their visit was supported by a Taubman College microgrant. “My research looks at rural regeneration, so the experience was quite incredible — to see firsthand how a cultural studio has been able to revitalize a rural community,” Dziwornu says.
As they prepared to return home, Abrahams and Dziwornu both expressed gratitude for the experience and their hosts’ commitment to collaboration and sharing knowledge, as well as the opportunity to work with each other. “The cohort is incredibly important,” Abrahams says. “Since we come from the same place, meaning Africa, it feels like you can ask questions and speak openly as one would do as brothers and sisters.”
— Eric Gallippo
