The Rising from the Depths Network aims to identify ways in which the marine and maritime cultural heritage of Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and Madagascar can be used to benefit coastal communities in these countries. Many of these communities are among the poorest in the region and are especially vulnerable to the impacts of geopolitical turmoil and environmental change. The coastal area of eastern and south-eastern Africa also the focus of global resource exploitation, with major offshore oil and gas discoveries often driving international investment, stimulating proposals for the development of super ports to facilitate maritime trade. Compared with the region’s terrestrial heritage, maritime and marine cultural heritage, in both its tangible and intangible forms, has received only minimal research interest especially from locally based scholars. To address this challenge and to help build local research capacity within the field, the Rising from the Depths Network funds a series of challenge-led, multidisciplinary arts and humanities collaborative research projects regional researchers with partners in the UK and in the public, private and NGO sectors in the region. These innovation projects are all aimed at filling knowledge gaps that currently limit the way Marine Cultural Heritage (MCH) contributes to social, cultural and economic sustainable growth in Eastern Africa, and at identifying roles that the conservation and public engagement with MCH can play in the long term success of coastal and marine development in the region.
Funding: AHRC-GCRF Network Plus Grant, 2018-21
Project Lead:
- Dr Jon Henderson, Department of Classics and Archaeology, University of Nottingham
Team Members:
- Professor Paul Lane, Department of Archaeology, Cambridge University.
- Dr Stephanie Wynne-Jones (Department of Archaeology, University of York.
- Dr Solange Macamo, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo, Mozambique.
- Dr Colin Breen, School of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Ulster University.
- Dr Annamaria La Chimia, School of Law, University of Nottingham.
- Professor Garry Marvin, Department of Life Sciences, University of Roehampton.
- Dr Luciana Esteves, Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, Bournemouth University
Image: Living marine cultural heritage, northern Mozambique. Photo: P. Lane.
AHRC
