Allegra Ayida

Allegra Ayida is a doctoral candidate in the department of History. Her research focuses on the longue durée maritime history of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Her dissertation project tentatively titled “Palm-oil, Piracy and Pipeline Politics; An Economic and Environmental history of Warri, Nigeria 1780-1980” narrates over three centuries of Warri’s history. Through a close reading of Nigerian, British and French archival sources, this interdisciplinary project reads traditional archival material alongside ethnographic, photographic, literary and cartographic materials. 

 

Her secondary research is on the global history of port cities in Non-Western Empires with a focus on East Asia and Africa. Using the lens of environmental history to explore the circulation of commodities and ideas across time and space.  

 

She is a graduate fellow in the environmental humanities at the Whitney Humanities center. And a Graduate Curatorial Intern in African Art at Yale University Art Gallery, where she researches the restitution of looted African artefacts currently held by European museums. She holds degrees from Wesleyan University (BA Hons), Kings’ College London (MA), and the University of Cambridge (Mphil).