Mercedes Baptiste Halliday

DPhil Student

St John's College

Research

Presence, absence and the traces in between: thinking through Asante traditional architecture.

Asante traditional architecture refers to an architectural form prevalent between the 18th and 19th century in the Asante region of present-day Ghana. Characterised by the wattle and daub building technique, organic building materials and courtyard house structure - only ten of these buildings survive today, on the outskirts of Kumasi. Whilst being inscribed onto UNESCO's World Heritage List, the buildings presently exist in a range of material states: some as reproductions, others in states of material ruination, or perhaps material absence - existing only as traces in the archive and memory. As such, these buildings inhabit multiple worlds, temporalities, and exist, or perhaps do not exist, between varying and shifting degrees of presence, absence and traces.

This research is interested in how various actors, from the Okomfo's (priests), craftspeople and tourists, to more-than-human actors, such as ancestors, spirits and invasive plants, interact with and conceptualise the constant flux and shiftiness of these buildings, and the things they pull into their orbit.

Mercedes is a recipient of the ESRC Grand Union DTP - St John's Interdisciplinary Research studentship.

Research keywords:

Architecture, heritage, contemporary archaeology, Ghana, in-betweeness.

Email: Mercedes.baptistehalliday@anthro.ox.ac.uk

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Biography

Mercedes is an artist, archaeologist-anthropologist, and is currently reading a DPhil in Anthropology at St John's, University of Oxford. Alongside this, she is the Fugitive Emissions artist-in-residence at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge.

She has previously exhibited at the Horniman Museum, UCL East, Studio Voltaire, and London College of Fashion, and has worked with various cultural organisations, such as the Council for British Archaeology, London Museum, Archaeology South-East, and Royal Museum Greenwich in curatorial, learning and engagement capacities.

Mercedes is the founder of Black Archaeo, an organisation that seeks to centre the health and wellbeing of Black and Brown people through an engagement with archaeology, heritage, art and ecology. She is also a fencing coach on the Muslim Girls Fence project, run by Maslaha and British Fencing.

Previous education

MPhil in Archaeology, Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge - Cambridge Trust Scholar
Postgraduate Certificate in Filmmaking, National Film and Television School (NFTS) - BFI Scholar
BA (hons) in Archaeology and Anthropology, University College London (UCL) - Awarded the Maragaret Murray prize for best dissertation on Egyptian Archaeology.