ABOUT
The Legacies of Biafra Heritage Project (LBHP) is an offshoot from the researcher's ongoing PhD research on the complex intersections of cultural heritage and the legacies of violent conflicts in the context of the Biafra War. The overall aim of the LBHP is to explore how the Nigeria-Biafra war and its legacies continue to impact the 'heritagescape' of affected communities.
It seeks to document the generative impacts of the Nigeria-Biafra war (and its legacies) – in addition to its more obvious and well-documented destructive impacts - on the heritagescape, with a particular focus on memory and intangible heritage.
The project findings will hopefully afford heritage professionals and global organizations the opportunity to reimagine (post-)conflict interventions in affected communities toward enduring positive peace.
At this stage, the LBHP seeks to examine the level of intergenerational knowledge/memory transfer of the Nigeria-Biafra war among young people (age 16-35) in south-eastern Nigeria.
The project does this via a survey and a narrative art contest in collaboration with Centre for Memories, Enugu and with support from Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI), British Institute in East Africa (BIEA) and the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, UK.
Stanley Jachike Onyemechalu is a Gates Cambridge Scholar and PhD Candidate in Archaeology at King’s College, University of Cambridge, UK.
His research, which was awarded the Emslie Horniman Anthropological Scholarship Fund by the Royal Anthropological Institute, explores the intersections of cultural heritage and the legacies of violent conflicts in the context of the Nigeria-Biafra war (1967-1970).
He is the current Book Reviews Editor for the Archaeological Review from Cambridge (ARC) and has a Lectureship in Archaeology and Heritage Studies with the University of Nigeria. Stanley is also co-Editor of the forthcoming volume, ‘Archaeology and the Publics’, for the ARC.
His research interests cut across (post-)Conflict Memory, (post-) Conflict-heritage, Indigenous and Decolonial Heritage, Museum Studies, and Community Archaeology.