Festivalising the postcolony: architecture, leisure, and political economy in West African urban carnivals
Funding period: 20 January 2026 – 20 September 2026
Type of funding:
International Fellowship
DOI: https://doi.org/10.69752/04M9-9M82
Award Number: USF-INT-251002
Dr Michael Gameli Dziwornu is a Ghanaian urban geographer and research scientist whose work bridges rigorous scholarship with public-facing practice. He heads the Thematic Mapping Section at Ghana’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research–Institute for Scientific and Technological Information (CSIR-INSTI). Holding a PhD in Urban Studies from the University of Milan-Bicocca, where his dissertation traced the spatial politics of container urbanism in Accra, his research spans human geography, migration studies, sustainable development, and carceral geography. His scholarship appears in Home Cultures, GeoJournal, Crime Prevention and Community Safety, Future Anterior, and the Journal of Asian and African Studies, and he regularly presents at global forums including the AAG, SAH, and the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam. Michael’s practice extends beyond academia: he co-curated “Intersections: The Architecture of Victor Adegbite and Charles Polónyi in Ghana” and “Asutsuare Rebound,” advised on climate-smart agriculture mapping for CGIAR, and serves as an external PhD examiner and mentor to emerging scholars. In 2025, he joined the University of Michigan as an African Presidential Scholar, deepening comparative work on post-socialist and post-colonial urban infrastructures. He is also a founding partner of Southeast, an intellectual platform linking Eastern European and West African thinkers, designers, and institutions.
As a USF International Fellow (2026), Dr Dziwornu will spend eight months at the University of Manchester (Department of Architecture), working under the mentorship of Professor Stephen Walker. During the fellowship, he will complete analyses and publish findings from “Festivalising the Postcolony: Architecture, Leisure, and Political Economy in West African Urban Carnivals”
Profile at Orcid | Profile at Africa Alliance | Profile at CSIR-INSTI | dzimike.md@gmail.com