Work: Research & Photography, History of Design Dissertation, 2025
Award: Award of Distinction
Location: England
View: Dissertation (redacted)
This project challenges the authority of the historical archive by exploring the garden as a living site of Afro-Diasporic memory. Where institutional records have long been shaped by colonial power, erasure, and control, Afro-Diasporic histories have persisted through oral, performative, and everyday practices.
I trace the living lineage from the colonial slave gardens in the Caribbean to contemporary gardens in Britain, showing how materials, knowledge, creative agency and diasporic cultural identity have survived through time, proposing the garden as an insurgent archive. Through interviews and photography of contemporary gardens and their gardeners, I establish oral and visual histories that constitute the design history dissertation as a living Afro-Diasporic archive in and of itself.
Award: Award of Distinction
Location: England
View: Dissertation (redacted)
This project challenges the authority of the historical archive by exploring the garden as a living site of Afro-Diasporic memory. Where institutional records have long been shaped by colonial power, erasure, and control, Afro-Diasporic histories have persisted through oral, performative, and everyday practices.
I trace the living lineage from the colonial slave gardens in the Caribbean to contemporary gardens in Britain, showing how materials, knowledge, creative agency and diasporic cultural identity have survived through time, proposing the garden as an insurgent archive. Through interviews and photography of contemporary gardens and their gardeners, I establish oral and visual histories that constitute the design history dissertation as a living Afro-Diasporic archive in and of itself.
