Change and Retention in Annotated Manuscripts of West Africa (A05)

• Subject Area: African, American and Oceania Studies
• Term: from 2013 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 181924784

Different domains of manuscript culture transform at different paces. Some manuscript practices are sustained over time, while others change or disappear. The previous two phases of project A05 have amassed and analysed enough data to permit the study of factors behind the transformation of the Soninke and Old Kanembu manuscript cultures, especially in the 20th century. This project will explore which domains of these cultures are more stable and why. Given the largely unrelated nature of the Soninke and Old Kanembu written traditions, the results of the proposed project will have typological importance for the study of dynamics in manuscript cultures in general.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 950: Collaborative Research Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures
• Applicant Institution: Universität Hamburg
• Project Head: Dr. Dmitry Bondarev