A conversation on the mechanics of memory

Following the positive reception from participants in our autumn webinar, Decolonising Museum Practices: A Dialogue between Brazil and Europe, we bring you the next in a series of deep dives exploring potential inroads for restitution and community representation in decolonial practice for the field of cultural heritage. In this 90-minute moderator-led discussion and audience Q&A, we examine the mechanics of memory, looking at how history is recorded and retrieved. Collections, Interpretation, and the Invisible focuses on the ‘engine room’ of heritage: metadata and archival storytelling. Using the concept of ‘Invisible Trees’ – referencing the omitted narratives of slavery and colonialism – we will dive into the technicalities of critical cataloguing, and discuss how to amplify silenced voices within digital collections and transform archival records from static colonial artifacts into inclusive, multi-perspective tools for education.

Target audience: This session is designed for curators and digital heritage experts who need tools to identify colonial bias in their collections, and a path towards inclusive community representation. It will also benefit anyone interested in learning more about colonial legacies in cultural heritage, discovering practical approaches to decolonial interpretation, and exploring how we can support more ethical, participatory and representative heritage work.

Speakers:

Kwame Boafo is a scholar and artist from Accra, Ghana, exploring how ritual, religion, embodied knowledge and African cultural expression intersect. He joins us as an immediate past fellow of the Restitution and Reparation: Africa and the Post-Colonial Condition fellowship at The Africa Institute, Global Studies University in Sharjah, UAE. Kwame holds an MA in Intercultural Communication Studies from the Shanghai Theatre Academy and a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from the Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies at the National University of Singapore.

Peter Jegede is a Nigerian archaeologist and museum curator who has worked for over 14 years across exhibitions, heritage research, and community engagement. As a researcher on the Open Restitution Africa roster of scholars, he studied restitution with an emphasis on restoring dignity, history, and memory in local communities, focusing his case study on the repatriation journey of three significant Ife cultural objects returned to Nigeria from institutions in Europe and North and South America. Peter is currently a Guest Researcher with the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA), conducting provenance research on shrine figures from southern Nigeria, and a 2026 Fellow of TheMuseumsLab. He holds a Master of Science in Industrial Chemistry and a Master of Philosophy in Environmental Management (Geoarchaeology), and is currently completing his PhD in Geoarchaeology at the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria.

You begin to understand a place by asking questions.
Where are you going? What are you looking at? What stories are hidden in everyday spaces?

These were the questions that shaped the second day of the Engaging Communities Summer School in Paros. Participants set out in groups with different themes in mind: some explored gathering spaces and how people interact with them, while others focused on local arts and crafts or investigated how traces of the past are woven into the present.

The streets of Parikia became our classroom. Through conversations with residents, observations of heritage spaces, and countless moments of curiosity, we continued to uncover the many ways heritage is lived and experienced in everyday life.

In the evening, we had the privilege of joining a masterclass with Dr. Philip Kwame Boafo from Accra, Ghana, who introduced us to sensory mapping, embodied heritage, and alternative ways of knowing. The session challenged conventional approaches to understanding place and invited us to pay attention not only to what we see, but also to what we smell, hear, taste, and feel.

Armed with this new perspective, we embarked on a sensory walk through Parikia. Suddenly, heritage revealed itself in the scent of jasmine drifting through alleyways, the sounds of conversations and footsteps, the texture of stone walls, and the feeling of the evening breeze.

I was invited as a guest lecturer to host a workshop for students in the First Year Writing Seminars: Elsewhere class at NYU Abu Dhabi.
The workshop was titled Object Display, Place-Making and the Post-Colonial Condition. As part of the discussions, students were encouraged to imagine themselves as objects on display and to speculate what they would feel, miss, say, or refuse to say.
Sometimes, the most generative way into complex questions is a shift in point of view.
Thanks to Prof Piia Mustamäki for the invitation.

Upcoming Event: This joint online lecture, Restitution and Reparation in Africa and the Postcolonial Condition, features fellows from the Spring 2026 cohort of the annual fellowship program on restitution and repatriation, presenting work developed during their residency.

Speakers and topics:

• Dr Katarzyna Puzon – “Restitution in Sound: Voicing What Cannot Be Returned”

• Dr. Philip Kwame Boafo – “Unsettled Returns: Ritual, Restitution, and the Re-colonisation of Sacred Objects”

• Nandiuasora “Nandi” Mazeingo – “Political, Economic, and Social Dimensions of Genocide: The Necessities for Justice”

📅 April 23, 2026
🕧 4:00–6:00 PM GST
📍 Online (Zoom)
Open to the public

The session is moderated by Mohammed Faroug A. Ali, Visiting Associate Professor of Archaeology at The Africa Institute (Global Studies University).

The fellowship, supported by The Africa Institute in collaboration with the Open Society Foundations, fosters critical research and dialogue on restitution and repatriation in Africa and its diasporas.

Visit our website to learn more and register to attend:

https://lnkd.in/dGrKTuG5

I had the pleasure of speaking with the incoming West African Road Residents from the Library Of Africa and The African Diaspora (LOATAD) about “Road Curiosity: On Knowing While in Motion.”

During our talk, I shared the idea that knowledge is something that moves and evolves, rather than being fixed, as in traditional archives. I used the road as a metaphor and a physical space for exploring knowledge in a fluid and experiential way.

I encouraged the residents to engage all their senses on their journey, to really experience the environments around them. We also discussed the idea of knowledge extractivism and how important it is to build relationships with people, places, and experiences in the process of learning.
I used the Kobolor as a framework to explore knowledge making with and from the periphery.

I’m excited to see and hear all the wonderful stories they’ll share after their road residency!

I co-facilitated a class with Céline Thobois-Gupta for the Ecology and Performance module at Trinity College Dublin. It was an exciting experience for me to talk about Threshold since its premiere at Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels back in 2024. The theme was “Setting the (S-)cene: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene, Plantationocene,” which sparked some great discussions. I talked about how Threshold came into being, what it struggled against, and what it revealed about collaboration, mobility, waste, and everyday material life.
The students watched the performance video and later reflected on how they related to the performance. We had some fascinating conversations about entanglements, the everyday, and how mediation can open up or foreclose possibilities for experiencing a site-specific performance. It was truly a joy to engage with their ideas!

On Saturday, 25 October 2025, we will host an online roundtable bringing together designers, researchers, and creatives from Africa, Europe, and Australia.

The Prelude is a warm-up to the main Africa Re/Designs gathering in Accra later this year. Supported by the Design History Society and Kwame Boafo, this 90-minute conversation will explore two chapters from my books Decolonising Design in Africa and African Design Futures.

The discussion will focus on:

> Rethinking design education in Africa
> Imagining what it means to design for decolonised consciousness

It is a space for reflection, connection, and imagination, asking how design can serve as cultural reclamation and collective future-making.

Date: Saturday, 25 October 2025
Time: 9:00–10:30 AM GMT (Accra) | 10:00–11:30 AM BST (London) | 11:00 AM–12:30 PM CEST (Berlin/Paris) | 8:00–9:30 PM AEDT (Melbourne/Sydney)

> Register: https://lnkd.in/gErNWUnf
> Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gjPydADr

Join us in rethinking and reshaping design for the futures we want.
hashtag#AfricaReDesigns hashtag#DecolonisingDesign hashtag#DesignFutures hashtag#DesignEducation

This sharing is part of a larger exploration of African rituals; a journey where I dive into the complex world of ritual practices, sometimes reflecting, questioning, probing, contesting, and always journeying alongside these personal and communal expressions. My intention here is not to define rituals in any final sense but to engage in a kind of free-flowing conversation that invites reflection on a subject often considered taboo or enigmatic.

In other words, I don’t aim to offer a complete account of rituals; instead, I acknowledge that rituals resist being neatly defined; no single perspective can encompass their full depth or potential. What I offer here is an evolving constellation of insights woven from personal anecdotes, artistic explorations, and scholarly reflections. These observations are meant to serve as starting points, sparks that might ignite further exploration, and encourage others to engage with rituals in their own lives, both as individuals and as part of larger communities.

I explore rituals as archives, as sources of creativity, resistance, and even as portals into speculative realities and alternative futures. I examine how rituals shape our identities and how they emerge through our communities, influencing everything from artistic expression to collective imagination.

Watch here

Saturday, 23 August, 2025

12.30 pm GMT

LOATAD, Adenta-Frafraha, Accra

Register at bit.ly/loatadwound or link in bio

Join us for The Wound as Archive, an afternoon of intimate reflection and creative exchange, presented by The Office of Poetry (@theofficeofpoetry) in collaboration with the Library Of Africa and The African Diaspora (LOATAD) in Accra. This event centres on a conversation between Dr. Kwame Boafo (@kwameboafo_) LOATAD’s Professor Ian H. Munro Fellow, and poet-curator Elikplim Akorli, alongside artists Lesley Asare, Enam Bosokah, and Kissiwaa (Priscilla Owusu-Mensah), whose works were featured in the evocative Water Memory exhibition at Elmina Castle.

Together, they will explore how personal and collective wounds—spiritual, ecological, and historical can serve as living archives of resistance and transformation. Inspired by Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of una herida abierta (the open wound), the dialogue will unfold through poetry, somatic movement, and communal listening.

The Wound as Archive invites you into a space of storytelling and embodied reflection, where memory, presence, and ancestral resonance converge to ask what hurts and what heals.