Lives of Objects: Virtual Gathering #1

The first gathering will take stock of restitution from multiple African perspectives, looking at both historical and present-day work on restitution. Moderated by Sherry Davis, Lives of Objects: Online Gathering #1 brings together five speakers to discuss the diversity of African-led initiatives, such as Open Restitution Africa and the collective Disrupting & Reorienting Restitution (that inspired the title of this event), which are pushing restitution forward and shifting the narrative from Eurocentric to African-centred. Karen Ijumba, senior researcher of Open Restitution Africa and Desiree Dibasen Nanuses, a case study researcher of this project, will be joined by Oluwatoyin Zainab Sogbesan, heritage architect, cultural historian and museologist, Juma Ondeng, Cultural Advisor of the Ministry of Gender, Culture, the Arts and Heritage of the Republic of Kenya, and Heba Abd El Gawad, an Indigenous heritage and museum researcher and curator, whose comics of the Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage project form the catalyst for the conversation. This event will set the tone for the series: exploring, reorienting and reclaiming the restitution narrative and process from multiple African perspectives.    

Biographies

Desiree Dibasen Nanuses is the founder and executive director for The Curatorial Institute and Yale University Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage Fellow on the Yale Director’s Forum and a consultant for a UK-based architecture firm as a decolonial specialist on a monument in Germany. She is also a researcher for Digital Heritage Africa’s Open Restitution Africa initiative. Her academic practice includes a role as course leader at Kingston University, London and a Ph.D. candidate (2020/23) in fine art curatorial practice piloting the curriculum in decolonial practice she designed as one of the outcomes from her doctoral degree. 

Heba Abd el Gawad is an Egyptian heritage and museum specialist, and research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, University College of London who specialises in the history of Egyptian archaeology and Egyptian perceptions and representations of ancient Egypt. Along with Professor Alice Stevenson, she co-developed the AHRC funded project: ‘Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage: Views from Egypt’ and has led various curatorial roles in Egypt and the UK. She has been named one of the most influential 21 Egyptian women in 2021 for her community work in the heritage sector.

Juma Ondeng studied MA Cultural Heritage and International Development at the University of East Anglia (UK). Currently working for the National Museums of Kenya as Keeper Antiquities, Sites and Monuments- Western Region. He is also one of the founder members of the International Inventories Programme – an international research and database project that investigates Kenyan objects held in museums and heritage institutions worldwide - which came into being in 2018. 

Karen Byera Ijumba has worked at the intersection of research, cultural heritage, creativity and digital knowledge management for over 10 years. She holds an LLB and BA (Hons) in heritage and public culture from UCT, and an MA in arts and culture management from Wits. She enjoys encountering different ways of being, looking at things as puzzles and maps, and thinking through how bits come together under one nuanced conceptual umbrella. She is currently the senior researcher at Open Restitution Africa.

Dr. Oluwatoyin Sogbesan is an architect, cultural historian, art and heritage specialist, and museologist. She is the founder of Àsà Heritage Africa, a non-governmental organisation focused on heritage identification, documentation and preservation of African cultural heritage. She is a member of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), and the Architecture and Urbanism Research Hub domiciled at the University of Lagos. She is an African Museology fellow at the Smithsonian Institute.