I have worked in formal and informal archives in Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Whether they are the local archives of a school, the national archives of France, or the archives of an organization like Unesco and the World Bank, they have all had their own logics, smells and hiccoughs.
Interviews in English, French and Italian have enriched—and sometimes substituted for—documentary sources. Conversations with more than sixty former teachers and students in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana have been integral to my research.
I have also conducted a dozen interviews with American and European actors involved in African education during the 1960s and 1970s.
