Samia Henni: Staging Archives of Colonial Toxicity (online/in-person)

This hybrid (online and in-person) event discusses the research and curatorial practice of Samia Henni, historian and exhibition maker focussing on built, destroyed and imagined environments. Henni’s work is often underpinned by acts of translation, practices of display, and a creative approach to authorship and publication. Her recent research project exposed the impact of French nuclear weapons testing in the Algerian Sahara between 1960 and 1966. Through an original orientation of testimonies, detonation and radiation fallout maps, photography, interviews, film and stills, Henni creates spaces for reckoning with colonialism as toxification and contamination of built and natural environments. Henni’s research hence poses critical questions regarding where we look for ecologies in the archive whilst using exhibition making to fashion visual and architectural spaces for reimagining.

Samia Henni’s research addresses questions of colonization, wars, resource extraction, deserts, forced displacement, and gender dynamics, often through unique materials. She is author of Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria and Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara, editor of Deserts Are Not Empty and War Zones, and curator of Performing Colonial Toxicity and Discreet Violence: Architecture and the French War in Algeria. She has held academic positions at Princeton University, ETH Zurich, Cornell University, and McGill University.

This hybrid event will take place on Teams and in person.

• For in-person participants: The venue is Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square, Birkbeck, WC1H 0PN (Gordon Square on Google Maps). Samia will present her work from 4-5pm. We will then remain in the space for a workshop. All materials will be provided.
• For online participants: We will email the Teams link for the online meeting in the confirmation and reminder emails.

This event is facilitated by the Critical Poetics and Ecology network. With funding from The Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts South-east England (CHASE), we convene for Spring 2026 around the theme of “creative fabulation and the archive”. If you would like to be involved in these or future activities of this research and practice network, please contact: criticalpoeticsandecology (at) gmail (dot) com, or follow our Eventbrite page.

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