This workshop that runs from the 09/11/2022 – 12/11/2022 in Accra, Ghana, aims to bring together scholars and practitioners in history, archival studies, heritage, postcolonial studies and anthropology from Europe and across the African continent in order to discuss both archival histories and archival futures as a way of reckoning with the epistemological and material legacies of colonialism. By doing so, it extends the current call for a future relational ethics to the sphere of archives and archival practices between Europe and Africa in the 21st century.
Exploring the archival legacies of colonialism from different disciplinary angles, the workshop questions the complex ways in which archives connect present-day societies to the past and the future. It does so in relation to three major themes: the material and epistemological legacies of colonialism in archival contexts, the specific roles of archives and archival practices in current demands for the decolonization of scholarship and memory and the issue of archival (dis)placement. Altogether, the workshop strives to raise fundamental questions about the relationship between our understanding, ownership and location of (colonial) archives on the one hand and the making of history on the other.
Our founder and Co-founder of Museum of British Colonialism, Chao Tayiana Maina, will be participating in a panel discussion on Saturday, 12th November, where they shall be discussing Alternative Archives in Africa and the World.
