Research and Publications
JC Niala is an anthropologist, environmental historian and museum scholar whose research examines how knowledge is produced, standardised and contested through collections, infrastructures, land and community practice.
Her work brings together three connected programmes: knowledge, standards and colonial collections; land, agriculture and food futures; and care, heritage and community practice. She combines ethnography, archival research, collaborative inquiry, creative practice and podcasting as a methodology for producing and sharing knowledge.
Across these areas, her work asks who is authorised to create knowledge, how institutions and infrastructures shape what becomes visible, and how communities remake inherited material worlds.
Research and Publications
JC Niala is an anthropologist, environmental historian and museum scholar whose research examines how knowledge is produced, standardised and contested through collections, infrastructures, land and community practice.
Her work brings together three connected programmes: knowledge, standards and colonial collections; land, agriculture and food futures; and care, heritage and community practice. She combines ethnography, archival research, collaborative inquiry, creative practice and podcasting as a methodology for producing and sharing knowledge.
Across these areas, her work asks who is authorised to create knowledge, how institutions and infrastructures shape what becomes visible, and how communities remake inherited material worlds.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles and Contributions
Niala, JC. “Questioning Care for Things (and Their People).” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 16, no. 2 (2026): 386–401. https://doi.org/10.1086/741873
Niala, JC. “Reconstituting Fragments.” African Arts 58, no. 1 (2025): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00760
Niala, JC, and Juma Ondeng’. “Developing Digital Research Methodologies for Kenyan Collections Held in UK Museums.” Third Text 38, nos. 4–5 (2024): 404–422. https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2025.2461372
Issue dated 2024, published online 19 March 2025
Niala, JC. “(Re)creating a Living Memorial: Urban Gardening as a More-than-Human Co-Creating Practice.” Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment 14, no. 1 (2023): 40–55. https://doi.org/10.37536/ecozona.2023.14.1.4830
Sole-authored · Open access
Niala, JC. “Rethinking Relationships and Building Trust around African Collections.” Journal of Museum Ethnography 35 (2022): 49–62. JSTOR record
Niala, JC, and Sherry Davis. “The Missing Link: Community Contribution and Absence in Archaeology in East Africa.” In “Special Issue: Inequality and Race in the Histories of Archaeology,” edited by William Carruthers. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology 31, no. 1, article 4 (2021): 3–4. https://doi.org/10.5334/bha-660
Niala, JC. “Dig for Vitality: UK Urban Allotments as a Health-Promoting Response to COVID-19.” Cities & Health 5, suppl. 1 (2021): S227–S231. https://doi.org/10.1080/23748834.2020.1794369
Niala, JC. “Reconstructing Relationships: An Auto-Ethnographic Account of Post-Colonial Museum Encounters.” Journal of Museum Ethnography 32 (2019): 136–149. JSTOR issue record
Book Chapters
Niala, JC. “What Can Plants Teach Us about Being Human?” In New Questions of Anthropology, edited by Ana P. Gutiérrez Garza and Fuad Musallam. London: LSE Press, forthcoming December 2026. Book page
Niala, JC. “Urban Food Infrastructures and the Politics of Permeability.” In The AnthroFood 2050 Manifesto: Anthropological Perspectives on the Future of Food, edited by Michele F. Fontefrancesco and Sabine Parrish, 201–210. Vicolo del Pavone, in association with EASA FoodNet, 2026. Open-access volume · ISBN 978-88-7503-286-9
Niala, JC. “What to Take and What to Leave Behind: Contemporary Ethical Collecting for a Museum in Oxford.” In Ethics of Contemporary Collecting, edited by Jen Kavanagh, Ellie Miles, Rosamund Lily West, and Susanna Cordner, 175–183. London: Routledge, 2025. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003393733-24
Niala, JC. “Restitution, Repatriation, and Reparation: Current Debates: Marejesho, Marudisho na Ulipaji Fidia: Mijadala ya Kisasa.” In Routledge Handbook of Critical African Heritage Studies, edited by Ashton Sinamai, John D. Giblin, Shadreck Chirikure, and Ishanlosen Odiaua, 207–220. Abingdon: Routledge, 2024. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003025832-19
Zetterström-Sharp, Johanna, JC Niala, and Juma Ondeng’. “Methodologies for International Access and Collaborative Collections Research in Museums: Challenges and Opportunities.” In Collections Management as Critical Museum Practice, edited by Cara Krmpotich and Alice Stevenson, 385–400. London: UCL Press, 2024. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800087040
Niala, JC. “English Allotments as Sites of Utopic Super-Diversity.” In Utopian Possibilities: Models, Theories, Critiques, edited by Liam Benison, 175–182. Porto: U.Porto Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.21747/978-989-746-359-4/uto
Niala, JC. “Cultural Production in a Digital Age: A Reflection on the Adaptation of an African Folktale for a Young Audience.” In African Theatre 17: Contemporary Dance, edited by Yvette Hutchison and Chukwuma Okoye, 135–152. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781787443150.008
Book Reviews
Niala, JC. Review of The Surface of Things: A History of Photography from the Swahili Coast, by Prita Meier. Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies 8, no. 2 (2024): 153–155. https://doi.org/10.26443/jiows.v8i2.187
Issue dated 2024; published online 31 March 2025 · Open access
Niala, JC. Review of Collective Wisdom: Collecting in the Early Modern Academy, edited by Anna Marie Roos and Vera Keller. British Journal for the History of Science 57, no. 1 (2024): 136–138. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087423000821
Niala, JC. Review of Koulsy Lamko, Bintou Wéré: African Opera. In African Theatre 19: Opera and Music Theatre, edited by Christine Matzke, Lena van der Hoven, Christopher Odhiambo, and Hilde Roos, 243–244. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781787449503.017
Practice Research and Creative Scholarship
Niala, JC. Portal: 1918 Allotment. Oxford: Fig, 2022.
Practice-research publication · 128 pages · ISBN 978-1-7397343-1-2
Doctoral Thesis
Niala, JC. “Banal Utopia: Urban Gardening as a Practice for Materialising Utopic City Spaces.” DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 2022; degree awarded 2023. Oxford Research Archive
Research Paper and Recognition
Niala, JC. “Seeds of Displacement & Resistance: Social Impacts of the First World War across the African Continent.”
Shortlisted for the Olivette Otele Prize, IHR History Lab, 2021–22
Research Programmes
Knowledge, Standards and Colonial Collections
This strand examines how institutions make knowledge through classification, protocol, measurement, digitisation and collections care. It asks how colonial standards continue to shape access and authority, and how collaborative research, restitution and community expertise can reconfigure relationships around museum and scientific collections.
Representative work: HAU; Third Text; UCL Press; Routledge Handbook of Critical African Heritage Studies; Journal of Museum Ethnography; African Arts; Bulletin of the History of Archaeology.
Land, Agriculture and Food Futures
This work explores cities through the land, organisms and infrastructures that sustain them. From allotments and urban food systems to milk and multispecies gardening, it investigates how crises expose the politics of everyday provision and how biodiversity, soil care and non-extractive relations might become durable urban practices.
Representative work: AnthroFood 2050 Manifesto; New Questions of Anthropology; Ecozon@; Cities & Health; Utopian Possibilities; Portal: 1918 Allotment; Milk on the Move; The Root of the Matter.
Care, Heritage and Community Practice
This strand treats care as a relationship and a research question rather than a neutral institutional virtue. It brings ethnography, public history, creative practice and participatory audio into conversation, asking how communities can become knowledge-makers and how inherited objects, histories and environments can be approached with accountability.
Representative work: HAU; Journal of Museum Ethnography; UCL Press; Afro Historyscapes; Portal: 1918 Allotment; African Theatre.
Audio Research and Podcasting as Method
Podcasting is part of Niala’s research methodology rather than an add-on to dissemination. Across museum, food and environmental research, audio creates space for community researchers, practitioners and scholars to develop questions together, place different forms of expertise in conversation, and return research in an accessible form. The selected series below combine interview, narrative, archival and participatory approaches.
Milk on the Move
2025–26 | Co-presenter and research contributor
An eight-part research podcast exploring the cultural politics of milk, where science meets politics and production systems shape everyday life. Through conversations with researchers, dairy producers and consumers, the series examines tradition, knowledge, morality and the infrastructures of milk.
Afro Historyscapes
2021 | Producer
A ten-episode series developed alongside the Horniman Museum and Gardens’ Community Action Research project. The series uses museum objects to tell African histories and shares research by curators, project staff and Community Action Researchers. Produced by JC Niala and Tom Fearon; co-produced by Sian Brett.
The Root of the Matter
2022 | Presenter
A five-part series developed with Wellcome Collection using plants as a lens on human health, history and belonging. Conversations with growers, scientists, writers and activists move through five landscapes: garden, farmland, woodland, wetland and wasteland.
