Although mainly designed as “scientific” materials for Western researchers, these collections often reflect different values from their countries of origin. In this WP, we explore the future potential of colonial scientific collections, focusing on plaster casts of human bodies—a representative category. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, physical anthropologists worldwide cast humans to study cultural differences through a racial lens. These collections were formed amid colonial, antidemocratic, and racist ideologies alongside scientific methods.

This WP examines collections from Bologna, Utrecht, and Charles universities, focusing on provenance and the involvement of geographic regions and communities. It explores the collaboration between anthropologists and colonial governments, as well as the current local valuations. In partnership with resident artists, the team will create a travelling exhibition on the contentious history of plaster casts, offering new insights and curatorial practices.

Contributors:

University of Bologna

• Maria Giovanna Belcastro (PI)
• Patrizia Battilani (PI)

Utrecht University and University Museum Utrecht

• Gertjan Plets
• Suzanne van der Wateren

University of Pretoria

• Siona O’Connell

Charles University

• Markéta Křížová

Designer and creative partners:

• Studio Louter

Botanical Gardens are prominent sites of scientific research, education and public engagement. It was in the colonial era that botanical gardens became a truly global phenomenon, and their history is intimately connected to the history of European expansionism.

This work package features an interdisciplinary team from Suriname, Italy, and the Netherlands investigating the roles of universities and botanical gardens in the domestication and spread of non-European plants in Europe. We analyze whether scientific and practical plant knowledge, along with the trade and exchange of living plants, seeds, and herbaria, are linked to colonialism. Based on this historical research, we seek to determine whether, how, and to what degree botanical gardens today still carry colonial legacies.

The goal of our work package is to develop new terminology to describe the coloniality of botanical gardens and to create an innovative educational program that teaches children and young adults about the complex and intertwined history of botanical gardens from a decolonized perspective. In this program, pupils learn how environmental issues and socio-cultural histories of colonialism are interconnected.

Our team consists of members from Utrecht University, the University of Bologna, the Anton de Kom University of Suriname. We work as historians, heritage experts, and biologists, and as curators, teachers, and researchers at the National Herbarium of Suriname, the Botanical Garden and Herbarium at Bologna, and the Utrecht University Botanic Gardens, supported by Amsterdam-based design studio Studio Louter, and artists-in-residence from different continents.

Contributors:

Utrecht University

• Mette Bruinsma (PI)
• Richard Calis (PI)
• Gijs Steur
• Rosa de Jong

University of Suriname

• Eliza Zschuschen
• Dorothy Traag

University of Bologna

• Monica Azzolini
• Juri Nascimbene

Designer and creative partner

• Studio Louter

Led by Nick Shepherd of Aarhus University and the University of Pretoria, together with Siona O’Connell of the University of Pretoria, with external partners The Greenlandic House (Aarhus) and the University of Liverpool, work packages 8 and 9 focus on the university campus as a generative space through which to understand deeply embedded legacies of colonialism, racial slavery and apartheid. The idea of ‘the campus’ is interpreted broadly to include the architecture and built environment of the university and its memorial landscape – but also details of gardening and landscaping, public artworks, evidences of institutional cultures, university museums and archives, university collections, and the total ‘ensemble’ of the university as institution.

This conceptualization of ‘the campus’ as research space draws substantially on the important interventions of the student-led social movement #RhodesMustFall at the University of Cape Town and Oxford University (2015), and on many other student-led initiatives at campuses globally. Amongst other things, these initiatives were concerned to make the connection between institutional habitus and history, and the kinds of knowledge projects that unfold within the university as institution – in other words, to connect details of architecture, landscape and culture to questions curriculum and knowledge.

The specificities of institutional histories will involve grappling with a range of topics including Afrikaner nationalism, apartheid forced removals, Denmark’s colonial past and present, ‘polar colonialisms’ and the status of Greenland, ‘tropical colonialisms’ and British imperialism, and many others. The outcome of this broad-ranging enquiry will be a ‘handbook’ – part DIY manual, part artist’s workbook – called ‘How to Decolonize Your University’.

Contributors:

Aarhus University

• Nick Shepherd (PI)

University of Pretoria

• Siona O’Connell

University of Liverpool

• Ilze Wolff

The intangible dimensions of knowledge production, identity, and representations are essential for understanding and addressing colonial entanglements. These issues differ from the decolonial acts of restitution and repatriation often linked to museum institutions. Instead, they concern how heritage is conceived and presented through knowledge representations and museological practices.

Learning from postcolonial universities and heritage institutions in Asia (with a focus on Vietnam), our working package explores the interface between European and Asian approaches towards decoloniality and heritage. Recent scholarly work underlines the complexity of decolonial practice in sedimented post-colonial legacies. In collaboration with Vietnamese colleagues, we reexamine the (de)colonial entanglements of heritage visions, values, and voice. We aim to explore new pathways and re-present intangible heritage visions, values and voice through collaborative engagement with heritage communities, culminating in a travelling multi-media exhibition that will be presented in both Vietnam and Switzerland.

The working approach includes collaborative research and the participatory preparation of an exhibition. The joint team comprises Peter Bille Larsen from the University of Geneva (PI) and a seconded Senior Researcher and Postdoctoral Researcher affiliated with the Institute for Cultural Studies (ICS) in Vietnam. A part-time Post Doc will also work with the University of Geneva.

Contributors:

University of Geneva

• Peter Bille Larsen

Vietnamese Academy for Social Sciences

• Hoang Cam
• An Thu Tra