Urban Talk #64 Conflict and Cohabitation: Co-creating Urban Spaces through Architecture and Applied Theatre

URBAN TALK
Monday, 07.07.2025, 5.00 p.m. | IfA Halle 7

Aliyu Yakubu Abdulkadir, Francesca Ceola & Rebecca Roberts - Conflict and Cohabitation: Co-creating Urban Spaces through Architecture and Applied Theatre

At the end of 2024, Nigeria was home to 3.7 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), one of the highest numbers on the African continent. Among the most affected regions towns are Jos, due to ongoing internal conflict, and Maiduguri which has experienced exodus due to climate-induced structural damage from flooding. Many IDPs migrate southward, with Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, becoming a frequent destination.

This Urban Talk takes a multi-sited perspective on the dynamics of displacement and place-making, examining both points of departure and sites of arrival. The session will feature three presentations:

Aliyu Yakubu Abdulkadir: Mentally Displaced Youth and Co-Creating Applied Theatre: The Re-Search for Sustainable Urbanity (Jos)

Francesca Ceola: Landscapes of Island Inhabitation in Lagos: Volatile Livelihoods and the ‘new‘ Urban

Frontier Rebecca Roberts: Spacemaking as a Measure of Rights to the City

The presentations will be followed by a commentary by Dr. Naomi A. Haruna from the University of Maiduguri.

Drawing on the empirical research from the three presentations, we will engage in a collective discussion on how displacement and (re-) appropriation shapes Nigerian cities from cultural and spatial perspective.

Aliyu Yakubu Abdulkadir is a lecturer in the Department of English and Literary Studies, Federal University of Kashere, Nigeria. He is currently studying for a cotutelle PhD in Cultural Sustainability (Theatre Arts) in the University of Hildesheim and University of Maiduguri.

Rebecca Enobong Roberts is a multidisciplinary development economist and a PhD candidate at the Technische Universität Berlin's Habitat Unit, funded by Elsa Neumann Stiftung. Her dissertation examines the intersectionality between internal displacement and translocal forced migration in the context of sustainable and inclusive urbanisation through spacemaking as a measure of the right to the city in Lagos, Nigeria.

Francesca Ceola is a geographer and PhD candidate at Habitat Unit, Institute for Architecture of the Technical University of Berlin. She is research assistant at the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Centre 1265 "Re-Figuration of Spaces" sub-project Architectures of Asylum II. For her PhD thesis she focuses on mapping the intersections between forced displacement, makeshift urbanisms, and socio-political ecologies in shifting landscapes in Lagos. She is involved in interdisciplinary creative collaborative approaches to research – through film making, performance, counter mapping, and dance.