Africana Digital Ethnography Project (ADEPt)

The African Digital Ethnography Project (ADEPt) gathers data-rich ethnographies from across Africa and the African Diaspora. Our growing repository of video and audio documents what UNESCO calls intangible cultural heritage (ICH), including oral history, performance and ritual. ADEPts list of research sites includes locations in Africa, the Caribbean and North America and will continue to expand.

Our focus starting in the 2017-18 academic year is on communities accessible to student researchers in which our faculty researchers have long-standing experience and continued interest. This includes Afro-Cherokee and Gullah-Geechee communities as well as central neighborhoods of Atlanta.

With the guidance and support of ADEPts core personnel, Atlanta University Center students and faculty collect new ethnographic data, interpret it and share analyses and content using technology-centered methods and platforms. A primary goal of the project is to engage Morehouse students, largely young Black men, in research that both addresses and transcends current events weighing heavily on our student body, taking them on new journeys of identity formation.