Summary

Participation in the Seminar Buildings, Space, Power: Postcolonial and Decolonial Histories of the Built Environment, coordinated by Professor Itohan Osayimwese, at Brown University. It consisted of a presentation on the ArchLabour project and a brief report on the Colonial and Post-Colonial Conference: Architecture, Cities, Labour, which took place in Lisbon in February 2026. It also included the presentation of ongoing research and a conversation with graduate students about the book chapter ‘Building the Fringes of Empire: Mining Companies, Transnational Experts, Race and Space in Colonial Africa’, which was published in the Critical Companion to Race and Architecture (Routledge, 2025), edited by Felipe Hernández and Itohan Osayimwese. Topics discussed ranged from oral history as a methodology and extractivism to race and racism, expertise and skills, the production of spatial knowledge over time, archives and the selective mobilisation of socio-spatial categories.