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Our history

The Ferguson Centre, named in honour of the founding Dean of Arts at the Open University, was established in 2002 to broaden the research and teaching base of the Faculty by promoting interdisciplinary study of the cultures of Africa and Asia. The Open University is in a unique position to foster cross-cultural and interdisciplinary research and teaching, and its international reach provides an opportunity for collaboration across geographical areas as well as disciplines.

The Centre’s main aims have been to foster research into issues concerning the nations, peoples and diasporic communities of Africa and South Asia, as well as organizing seminars, symposia, exchanges and conferences; encouraging postgraduate research and publication; and developing collaborative research projects.

Under its first Director, David Richards, and his successors, Suman Gupta and Bob Owens, and Dennis Walder, the Centre developed a number of exchanges and collaborative research projects, involving colleagues within the OU and abroad. For more details please go to the projects archive. Several projects obtained external funding ‘Religion and Spirituality in a Postcolonial Context’ (with Duncan Brown of the University of Western Cape), Lotte Hughes', ‘Managing Heritage, Building Peace: Museums, memorialisation and the uses of memory in Kenya’ (with Annie Coombes, Birkbeck College, London, Anna Bohlin, Göteberg University, Göteberg, Karega Munene, United States International University, Nairobi), ‘Commodities of Empire’ (with Jean Stubbs and Jonathan Curry-Machado of University College London), and ‘The Indian Ocean: Narratives of Literature and Law’ (with Stephanie Jones of Southampton University), and Susheila Nasta's, ‘Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad, 1870-1950’ (with Elleke Boehmer, Oxford).