pco23@yorku.ca
Patrick C. Okpalaeke is a doctoral researcher in the History program at 91ÑÇÉ« in Ontario, Canada. Okpalaeke’s work engages African history and the histories of science, technology, medicine, and the environment in the twentieth century. He is particularly interested in how colonial extractive quests and their many forms of mining brutalities shaped the everyday lived experiences of African peoples and altered the ecological structures of societies. With a primary interest in Nigeria – and by extension, the West African region – my research brings the aforementioned subfields together to illuminate the social, technological, medical and environmental worlds that emerged during and after mining. More broadly, Okpalaeke’s research attends to the many silenced voices/events, using them as local flavour to enrich global conversations that revolve around colonial/postcolonial eras.
Keywords: Africa, Mining, Health and Medicine, Technology and Environment