"Alma Simba is a historian and sound practitioner whose work explores ancestral heritage through both academic research and non-academic approaches. She focuses on how indigenous Black Africans engage with history through oral traditions, memory, and imagination, with particular attention to Tanzanian heritage and oral histories shaped by violence and dislocation. Her artistic practice draws on the textures of urban life—recorded sounds, conversations, and readings of her writing—blending historical research with experimental sound and creative writing. Rooted in Black, feminist, and post-colonial perspectives, her work makes history accessible beyond academic spaces. She completed her Master of Arts in History (specialising in Ethnohistory and Museum Collections) at the University of Dar-es-Salaam, and served as an assistant lecturer in the Department of History, Archaeology and Heritage Studies. In 2022 was selected to participate in University of Göttingen’s Sensitive Provenance Research Fellowship Programme, in Germany. Through this experience she was able to work closely with the Isanzu community members, key advisors and stakeholders, to map and report on a community-centred approach to the restitution of Isanzu human ancestors. She is currently studying towards her PhD through the Justus Liebig University Giessen • Gießen, and is leading the project ""“Niko njiani…Nimefika” – Transit/Arrival: Women and Being in Urban Spaces"" located at the Global Center of Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability (GCSMUS)."
Community Awareness and Restitution of Isanzu Ancestors’ Human Remains from the University of Göttingen Collections to Mkalama District, Tanzania