Organisers

Zainabu Jallo,  Doctoral candidate at the Institute for Social Anthropology, University of Bern, Switzerland and University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Through Candomblé`s material culture, her research project follows the development of the Afro-Brazilian religion, from a closed, sacred cult fraught with discrimination and persecution in its beginnings, to its emergence as one of Brazil`s richest religious cultures. 

Her MA thesis, “Mythopoeisis in the Reinvention of an Ethnic Self: Aesthetic Tensions in Borderlands/La Frontera and A Cannon Between my Knees”, accentuates the complex relationships between myth, culture and ideology in Native American Literature. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts England, and UNESCO Coalition of Artists for the General History of Africa. Her scholarly interests include Diaspora studies, Iconic criticism, and Material Culture. Read about her current project on the Material Culture of Candomblé here