The first period of the project has been devoted to multi-situated and multilingual archival work in Europe and Niger. We have visited archives and libraries in four countries, seven cities, and various libraries and archival repositories in Berlin, Hamburg, Paris, Birmingham, Leipzig, Niamey, and Zinder. These yield important findings: we have identified personal archives of several major collectors of Hausa and Kanuri collections, we have worked on a huge corpus of Kanuri text in Latin script containing rich materials on late 19th century and early colonial occupation in Niger and we gain access to the largest private library of Arabic and Ajami's manuscript known to this date in Niger hosted by the Chétima family in the city of Zinder.
In parallel with this research, we have had at heart to bring back these materials and this history where it belongs. In this regard, the PI Camille Lefebvre with Laminou Issaka Brah one of the Deputy Mayor of the city of Zinder in Niger organized a public exhibition in December 2018 entitled Zinder 1900 and dedicated to the history of the city displaying photos and Hausa historical texts. The Sultan of Damagaram, Aboubakar Oumarou Sanda, hosted the display in the courtyard of his palace, which he opened to the public for the first time— this exhibition has been a huge success, 25 000 people came to see it. For a second time, the exhibition was displayed in Niamey in spring 2019 at the Jean Rouch France-Niger cultural center. Camille Lefebvre the PI and Ari Awagana have built a strong partnership with the local municipal and the Sultanate authorities based on trust and the willingness to make the long and rich history of the Sultanate better known.
The PI has presented her ongoing research and results in public conferences in Paris (2020), in Zinder (2018, 2019), in Niamey (2018, 2019), in Lille (2019), and keynote speeches in Zinder (2018) and Pilsen (2018) and Ari Awagana has made public conference in Zinder (2019)and Lille (2019) and presented papers in Vienna (2019) and Hamburg (2018), etc. Particular emphasis was put during this first phase of the project on collective work and inter and cross-disciplinary development. The team (Camille Lefebvre, Ari Awagana, Benedetta Rossi, Stephanie Zehnle, Elara Bertho, and Cecile Van den Avenne) visited archives together and worked together with other experts (Dmitry Bondarev, Jean Charles Hilaire, Hadiza Nazal, and Chaibou Landi) on the documents. Reading the same archive with various pairs of eyes coming from different disciplinary backgrounds has regularly brought out new sets of questions.
