EU gives UNILAG, others 2.2m euros research grant

The University of Lagos will benefit from the European Union five-year funded research grant to the tune of 2.2 million euro.

This was contained in a statement signed by the Deputy Registrar Information, University of Lagos, Toyin Adebule, and made available to the News Agency of Nigeria on Wednesday in Lagos.

The grant, which is for a tripartite joint research project among the Universities of Lagos, Sussex in the UK and the Kenyatta University in Nairobi, is being funded by the European Research Council of the EU.

The project, known as The Cultural Politics of Dirt in Africa, 1880-Present, will span five years.

The statement said: “It has received funding from the European Research Council, an arm of the EU.

“Kenya has recently been awarded by the European Research Council of the European Union for a new international cultural studies project.”

It said that the five-year tripartite research project among the institutions would survey African urban life and generate data based on attitudes to and perceptions of ‘dirt’ in the cities of Lagos and Nairobi.

It said that the international multicultural research project was seeking to understand and document how multiple and conflicting definitions of ‘dirt’ activate attitudes.

The statement also added that it was also seeking to get perceptions of dirt among people of similar or different backgrounds.

It said that the University of Lagos recently signed the consortium agreement, tagged DIRTPOL, with the University of Sussex in the UK and Kenyatta University in Kenya.

According to the statement, DIRTPOL is an interdisciplinary study of contemporary attitudes to dirt, which is expected to, among other things, inform public health policy and practice in Africa.