Melanin Matters – Skin tone differentiation in Lagos, Nigeria (Part 1)

In November 2024, PhD student Marion Grimberg and podcast host Friederike Brinker travelled to Lagos, Nigeria, to talk about skin tone differentiation. We dedicated an entire week of events to this topic and, of course, we wanted you to be able to join the conversation. So, we recorded a podcast episode during our workshop for wome*n called “Living in your own skin”. For the podcast we conducted our usual interview with a scientist (in this case: three scientists), and also included shorter interviews with workshop participants who shared their personal experiences with skin tone differentiation. We have split the episode in two parts, the second episode will be published in early February.

In this episode we discuss light-skin privilege, skin lightening, and the difference between the concepts of colorism and skin tone differentiation.

Our interviewees are:

Marion Grimberg, PhD Student and Social and Cultural Anthropologist at the CRC 1482 Human Differentiation researching skin tone differentiation in Nigeria and Germany.

Olabanke Goriola, PhD Student in Performance Studies at Northwestern University researching colorism among dark-skinned female Nigerian dancers.

Dr. Folakemi Cole-Adeife is a dermatologist and venereologist at Lagos State Teaching Hospital and a skin health influencer on Instagram and TikTok.

This podcast also includes shorter interviews with participants of our workshop “Living in your own skin” by Agatha Chidinma and Oluwaseyi.