About us
The Antislavery Knowledge Network explores how approaches from the arts and humanities can address contemporary forms of exploitation. It adopts a community-engaged, human rights focus that delivers development impacts.
About us
The Antislavery Knowledge Network explores how approaches from the arts and humanities can address contemporary forms of exploitation. It adopts a community-engaged, human rights focus that delivers development impacts.
The Antislavery Knowledge Network
Bringing together African experts and community leaders with UK researchers
The Antislavery Knowledge Network is a partnership that links UK researchers with experts and community-leaders in African countries. The core members of AKN are three of the main centres on research into slavery in the UK (CSIS – University of Liverpool, WISE – University of Hull and Rights Lab – University of Nottingham) and the University of Ghana, Legon.
Since October 2017, AKN has commissioned 14 innovative, community-engaged projects across 8 countries in Africa, in Niger, Mali, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, DRC, Uganda, and Kenya. The projects funded through the AKN have delivered arts-based outputs that address modern slavery. The foundations of each project were the requirements to be collaborative, address local needs and to be impact-driven. To deliver its online exhibition the AKN has also collaborated with a team of Guest Curators based in East Africa.
AKN is one of a group of international academic networks funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK through the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). They have been set up to conduct collaborative arts and humanities-based research into some of the world’s most pressing development challenges.
AKN Team
Wazi Apoh
AKN Management Group
Wazi Apoh is Dean of the School of Arts and Associate Professor at the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, University of Ghana, Legon.
Wendy Asquith
AKN Exhibition Lead
Wendy Asquith is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Politics at University of Liverpool and has led the AKN online exhibition project.
Alex Balch
AKN Director
Alex Balch is Professor of Politics at the University of Liverpool and Director of Research at the UK’s Modern Slavery Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC).
Helen Bryant
AKN Project Manager
Helen Bryant is a Policy Officer with the African Programming and Research Initiative to End Slavery (APRIES). She was Project Manager with the AKN from 2017-2021.
Charles Forsdick
AKN Management Group
Charles Forsdick is James Barrow Professor of French at the University of Liverpool. From 2012 until 2021 he was AHRC Theme Leadership Fellow for ‘Translating Cultures’.
Ben Kankpeyeng
AKN Management Group
Benjamin Warinsie Kankpeyeng is an Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies and the University of Ghana, Legon.
Allen Kiconco
AKN Exhibition Guest Curator
Allen Kiconco is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa specialising in survivor-centred research practice.
Chao Tayiana Maina
AKN Exhibition Guest Curator
Chao Tayiana Maina is a digital humanities specialist based in Kenya, Founder of African Digital Heritage and Co-founder of the Museum of British Colonialism.
Lennon Mhishi
AKN Postdoctoral Researcher
Lennon Mhishi is a project researcher at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. He was a postdoctoral Research Associate with the AKN from 2017-2021.
John Oldfield
AKN Management Group
John Oldfield is Professor of Slavery and Emancipation at the Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE) at the University of Hull.
Sophie Otiende
AKN Exhibition Guest Curator
Sophie Otiende is Founder and Director of Azadi Kenya, a survivor-leader and protection practitioner with over 10 years’ experience working with grassroots organisations.
Zoe Trodd
AKN Management Group
Zoe Trodd is Professor of Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking, and Director of the Rightslab at the University of Nottingham.
Leona Vaughn
AKN Postdoctoral Researcher (Safeguarding)
Leona Vaughn is Derby Fellow at the University of Liverpool and Vulnerable Populations Lead at UNUCPR. She was a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the AKN from 2019-2020.
