Ferdinand de Jong

Ferdinand de Jong (1961) conducted his doctoral research on masked performances and initiation ceremonies in Senegal, for which he received his doctorate from the University of Amsterdam in 2001. Since 2000 he has been Lecturer in Anthropology at the School of World Art Studies and Museology of the University of East Anglia, where he lectures on African art, the anthropology of art and material culture, and public art, heritage and memory.

His publications include his revised dissertation, published as Masquerades of Modernity: Power and Secrecy in Casamance, Senegal by Edinburgh University Press and Indiana University Press (2007). He has co-edited a special issue of the Canadian Journal of African Studies on the civil war in South-Senegal and, with Mike Rowlands, Reclaiming Heritage: Alternative Imaginaries of Memory in West Africa (Left Coast Press, 2007). Recently, De Jong co-edited – again with Mike Rowlands – a special issue of the Journal of Material Culture on postconflict heritage.

His current research focuses on the heritage and memory of the slave trade and colonialism and a recent shipwreck in postcolonial Senegal. This project combines multi-sited research on various lieux de mémoire with a theoretical question: How does a postcolonial nation imagine itself through its heritage/memory? The aim of the project is to provide a counterpoint to the many investigations in European lieux de mémoire, examining the distinctly postcolonial nature of heritage/memory in Senegal.

During his research leave at the Amsterdam School of Social Research De Jong will be working on his next monograph, provisionally titled The Nation Remembered: Heritage/Memory in Postcolonial Senegal.