A SCOTLAND-BASED lecturer who has worked with a French Uniqlo store to install an information plaque on colonialism in their building is urging Scotland’s academic community to "be dynamic" with their own research on colonialism.
Paul Max Morin, a French associate researcher at the University of Stirling and a lecturer at the Menton (Alpes-Maritimes) campus of Sciences Po Paris since 2018, recently discovered a safe in the Uniqlo store in Marseille which customers enter to use the fitting rooms.
“The building was actually a colonial bank that was created at the end of the 19th century, 1865, to finance basically the colonisation in Algeria,” Morin, 37, explained.
“It is a shock, to be between the past and the present in which in you have today, young French people that may be working or buying clothes, not knowing that the safe contained the wealth and resources that were that were created by the exploitation of Algeria and maybe their direct, great grandparents.”
The opulent building still retains Art Nouveau features from the original bank alongside the safe, including ornamental railings and an engraved exterior gate.
As part of the project titled "The Empire's Vault” alongside a team of his second-year political science students, Morin set out to get an information plaque installed by store management, and carried out research on the store’s customers and their personal connection to Algeria.
The team found that 42% of the store's customers had a family connection to Algeria and 66% had a negative view of colonization.
"When Paul Max Morin contacted us, we were initially surprised," a spokesperson for Uniqlo France said.
"Then we saw the opportunity to convey the right message about the building's colonial past, in a factual, humble, and respectful manner."
Uniqlo added: "We supported the project before knowing these figures.”
'You never know what you're going to discover'
Stirling University assisted in funding the project, with Morin adding: “I think Stirling understood the originality of the projects and obviously Scotland has its own heritage with the empire and the colonization of countries as part of the UK.
“When I came to Scotland, I did the tour of Glasgow with some artists went through the cemetery and stuff and you had the statues of former slave owners and so on and in the space you have no signs, no way to actually understand the wealth of Glasgow.
“There was the wealth of all these slave owners, and they are presented as, you know, captains or industrial owner, and so on, but you can't actually guess where the wealth is coming from and how it was created, which is my main purpose here.
“We could also, in my eyes, organise some colonial tools to explain where the wealth is coming from, and this tour I did in Glasgow made me think of that. Or we could also work on the colonial legacy like the physical presence of this history to tell.
In a message to fellow academics in Scotland, Morin said: “You never know what you're going to discover. Or is there something that you've learned through this that others should know?
“I would also say be a bit broader with the teaching experience, involve students in the making of the education. I think that's a great experience and trying to connect research with local stakeholders to have an impact on what we study - that's very dynamic in academia.”
