Historically, universities have been foundational to promoting and shaping European culture, knowledge, and values including democracy, human dignity, freedom, human rights, and equality as a global project. They have also been leading institutions for promoting dialogue and building strategic alliances between the global north and the global south in the fields of science, heritage, and cultural and creative industries.

In recent years, universities and museums in Europe have increasingly developed innovative approaches to address the colonial entanglements in their collecting practices, material legacies, understandings of national and transnational identities, and the production of knowledge.

However, unfinished conversations with former colonies about colonial legacies in and beyond Europe remain barriers to cooperation and exchange as well as the promotion of European values. COLUMN brings together partners from the creative industries, seven European universities from the Coimbra network, including some of the oldest research universities in Europe, and partner universities from the global south to rethink, reframe, and refresh approaches to European and postcolonial arts, culture, heritage, and societal values.

Focusing on four pilot interventions that apply new collaborative and decolonial curatorial practices, COLUMN will lead the development of policies, recommendations, and good practices for new collaborations around European university heritage through strategic partnerships within and beyond the borders of the EU. Bridging knowledge production and creative arts practices, it builds an understanding of European cultural heritage as a vehicle to strengthen rights-based and equitable approaches to colonialism in dialogue with global south partners – thus paving the way for cultural cooperation in the true spirit of modern European values. Through its deliverables, the project redefines scholarly consensus, heritage practice, and policy.

COLUMN involves partners in Suriname (Anton de Kom University of Suriname), the Netherlands (Utrecht University and Studio Louter), Austria (University of Graz), South Africa (University of Pretoria), Switzerland (University of Geneva), the Czech Republic (Charles University), Italy (University of Bologna), and Denmark (Aarhus University).

The project is co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe Programme and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI). with a total budget exceeding 4.4 million euros. At UU, it is supported by Institutions for Open Societies and the Coimbra Group partnership.