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.