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Professor Emeritus Phillip Tobias was a South African palaeoanthropologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He is known both for his vast body of work on South African hominid fossil sites, and his anti-Apartheid activism, which began in his student years, and continued throughout his professional career as an academic. Tobias was appointed to lead the Reference Group that supported one of the first human ancestor repatriations to Africa, this being the return of Sara Baartman to South Africa from France's Musee de l'Homme, and her subsequent reburial and memorialisation in her homeland in the Eastern Cape. His networks were critical in creating a bridge for dialogue between the Reference Group, the South African government and Musée de l'Homme.
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Abba Isa Tijani is a Nigerian Professor of Museology and Anthropology and Director of the SDG Graduate School Performing Sustainability at the University of Maiduguri since February 2025. After an education in Creative Arts, Museum Studies and Anthropology he concluded with a PhD Thesis on Tradition and Modernity – The Gamergu (Malgwa) of North-Eastern Nigeria. Tijani directed the Centre for the Study and Promotion of Cultural Sustainability at the University of Maiduguri from 2016 to 2020, before being appointed Director General/CEO of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments in Abuja, Nigeria (NCMM). During his tenure at NCMM [2020 - 2024] Tijani spearheaded a strategic, non-litigious and diplomatic approach to restitution, which resulted in the repatriation and return of numerous Nigerian belongings from institutions in North America and Europe.
Affiliation(s): National Commission for Museums and Monuments University of Maiduguri University of Hildesheim
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Tunde Babawale is a political scientist and cultural advocate. He is a Professor of Political Economy at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, and the former Provost, Anti-Corruption Academy of Nigeria (ACAN) Abuja; the training and research arm of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC). Babawale is a graduate of the University of Ife, Ile-Ife. He began his professional career as a teacher at a government secondary school in Adamawa State. In 1985, Adeyemi College Campus of Obafemi Awolowo University employed Babawale as an Assistant Lecturer. He speedily rose through academic ranks, and by 2002, he was appointed as a Professor of Political Science at the University of Lagos (UNILAG). He also spent over two decades educating undergraduate and postgraduate students in UNILAG's Department of Political Science, and was the founding and managing editor of the reputable UNILAG Journal of Politics up until 2006. In 2006 he was appointed as the Director General of the Centre for African and Black Arts and Civilization. He was mandated to restructure and reposition the institution as a space for the advocacy and promotion of culture as a driver of socio-economic development in Nigeria. During his tenure, he managed to transform the center into a world-class arts and culture agency. The centre organised and hosted 8 international conferences for experts on Africa, and African Diaspora studies both within and outside Nigeria, and served as a vibrant hub for public dialogues concerning the restitution of Nigeria's cultural heritage. Babawale is a prolific author who has contributed over one hundred and twenty (120) papers to learned local and international journals, international conference proceedings, and technical papers. He is also a member of many learned and academic associations and societies, including the Nigerian Political Science Association, the Historical Society of Nigeria, and the Third World Forum.
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Dr. Mikaél Assilkinga is an associate researcher and works as a project researcher (DZK) at the Linden-Museum in Stuttgart. His research interest is in power objects from Cameroon in German museums with a focus on the consequential effect of their translocation in the Cameroonian societies of origin and in Germany. He also deals with the provenance of Cameroonian so-called human remains from the colonial context. He received his doctorate from the Technical University of Berlin and worked from 2021-2024 as a research assistant on the project Reversed History of Collections: Cameroon’s Cultural Heritage in German Museums. He was also selected to participate in the Sensitive Provenance Research Fellowship at the University of Göttingen in 2022/23.
Affiliation(s): Technical University of Berlin
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Published Work: Des « objets de pouvoir » au Cameroun, dépouillés de leur pouvoir en Allemagne ; Misjudged, Missing, Coveted. Objects of Power from Cameroon in Germany
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Dr Pastory Magayane Bushozi is the Director of Humanities Research Centre and a Senior in the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He is also a country representative to the Committee of the Eastern Africa Quaternary Research Association (EAQUA), and the Association of Southern Africa Paleontologists and Archaeologists (ASAPA). Dr Bushozi’s research focus on Human evolution, Lithic technology, Paleoecology and Heritage Management. He is interested on Quaternary human landscape for the past 2.6 million years. He tries to pursue research that focuses on influence of environmental changes to human evolution, cultural transformations and technological developments. He interested to understand when hominins had the cognitive ability to make objects that are more than just functional tools to butcher carcases, but something, which communicates the dreams and thoughts of toolmaker to others an act that differentiate humans with other hominins. Academically, Dr Bushozi holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada and a B.A in Archaeology and environmental studies and M.A in Archaeology from the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He has researched and written extensively on the trend of human biological and cultural evolution, looking on inclination related to subsistence behavior, diet preference, technological innovations,human adaptation to the over changing environment as well as sustainable cultural heritage management and conservation.
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Professor Oswald Masebo is a prominent academic in the field of heritage, museums and German-Tanzanian relations, and a Senior Lecturer in the History Department at the University of Dar es Salaam. His publications focus on African history and the history of medicine and Tanzanian experiences of the First World War. He is the president of the Historical Association of Tanzania.
Affiliation(s): University of Dar es Salaam
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Published Work: Epistemologische Leerstellen in den verflochtenen Geschichten Tansanias und Deutschlands
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Dr. Martha Akawa-Shikufa is a histrorian and educator who currently heads up the Department of Geography, History and Environmental Studies at the University of Namibia in Windhoek. She holds a holds PhD in History from the University of Basel, a Master's in Anthropology and Diploma in Heritage and Museum Studies from the University of the Western Cape, and a Bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Namibia. She possess a vast knowledge and experience of Namibian History, and is particularly interested in the liberation struggle of Namibia, gender and heritage relates issues. In 2014, she, along with Dr. Jeremy Silvester conceptualised >>Africa Accessioned<<, a multi-nation project that sought to build networks between museums in four African countries (Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe) held in museums in four European countries (Finland, Germany, Sweden and the UK). This project yielded a handful of returns, and formed the foundation for the first restitution project in Namibia - Confronting Colonial Pasts, Envisioning Creative Futures.
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Prof Morongwa N Mosothwane is a Forensic Anthropologist and Archaeologist who received her PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand (2010) and completed a post-doc at the University of Pretoria (2011). She has worked in Southern Africa, North America and Europe and is interested in the ethics and management of human remains and sacred objects in institutional collections and in related international legislation. She is a member of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists, Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists, Pan African Archaeology, World Archaeology Congress, and ICOM. She is a member of the editorial board of Museum International, a member of the IZIKO Human Remains Advisory Board and a member of the Commonwealth Association of Museums.
Affiliation(s): University of Botswana IZIKO Human Remains Advisory Board Commonwealth Association of Museums
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Published Work: Who were they? Repatriation and the rehumanisation of human remains in museums in southern Africa (In Museums and Communities: Diversity, Dialogue and Collaboration in an Age of Migrations; Human Remains Management in Southern Africa, a regional attempt at addressing unethical collections made in the colonial period.
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Fogha Mc Cornilius Refem (aka Wan wo Layir) is a self-prescribed severe drapetomania “patient”. He is an in[ter]discipline[ed]ary artist and an academic nomad with a background in sociology, international relations, and social work. He completed his Master's in social work at the Alice Salomon-Hochschule in Berlin with a focus on decolonizing social work practice and theory through what he called a ‘self-redemptive professional suicide’. He was a Humanity In Action Senior Fellow of the 2021 program and has participated in the untold stories project producing a short documentary about human zoos in Berlin. Refem has actively participated in the diasporic campaign to #BringBackNgonnso. He is currently studying towards his PhD at Universität Potsdam. He describes his dissertation project, titled ‘Ontologies In Conversation’: Restitution As A Cosmopolitan Practice' , as work that ""seeks to ‘pivot the center’ and theorize from multiple angles so as to make new approaches, themes, and questions visible in the current debate for the restitution of objects looted from Africa during colonization"".
Affiliation(s): Universität Potsdam Antikoloniale Visionen | Initiative Perspektivwechsel e.V. Humanity in Action
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Published Work: In Defence of Theft?: On the Theft and Restitution of Ngonnso’ and Punitive Exhibitions (In Fifteen Colonial Thefts: A Guide to Looted African Heritage in Museums); Embracing death so they may yet be space for life (In Atlas of Absence: Cameroon's Cultural Heritage in Germany) ; Human Zoos | Enforced Silences
