Academia
African Voices Archive
Dr. Maximilian Chami
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"Dr Maximilian Felix Chami is a cultural heritage specialist based in the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam. He holds a PhD in Heritage Studies from BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany. Dr Chami previously served as a senior research officer and secretary of the restitution committee at the National Museum of Tanzania (2021–2022), and as a Culture and World Heritage Officer at the UNESCO National Commission of the United Republic of Tanzania (2015–2021). In 2022, he was appointed as a Sensitive Provenance Research Fellow at the University of Göttingen, and in 2023, he joined Open Restitution Africa (ORA) as a researcher, contributing to efforts aimed at improving access to information concerning the restitution of African material culture and human remains. Dr Chami held a research fellowship with the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at the University of Göttingen, where he focused on colonial heritage and history. His research interests include cultural heritage management, colonial heritage, restitution, and the repatriation of human remains and ethnographic collections."
Affiliation(s): University of Dar-es-Salaam
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Published Work: Community Awareness and Restitution of Isanzu Ancestors’ Human Remains from the University of Göttingen Collections to Mkalama District, Tanzania; Restitution and Repatriation of Ancestral, Human Remains from Colonial Contexts in Tanzania.
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"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)."
Affiliation(s): University of Dar-es-Salaam
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Published Work: Community Awareness and Restitution of Isanzu Ancestors’ Human Remains from the University of Göttingen Collections to Mkalama District, Tanzania
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Dr Bulami Edward Fonyuy is a literary scholar and holds a PhD in Postcolonial Literatures, with a specialisation in Oral Literature. He is a member of the Nso community, and served as the Nso Cultural and Development Association (NSODA) Secretary General from 2009 – 2017. In this role he supported Sehm Mbinglo I – Paramount Fon of the Nso with drafting correspondence to various stakeholders in the Ngonnso restitution case. He also sensitised Nso community members and the general public – in Cameroon and abroad – to the issues surrounding the restitution of Ngonnso, especially through publications and presentations. He also actively mobilised Nso community members to participate in the fight for Ngonnso, as the ideator and main promoter of the annual Nso Cultural Festival. He remained actively involved in the more recent restitution efforts surrounding Ngonnso, as a cultural consultant for Ngonnso and a member of the entourage that accompanied the Fon of Nso to Berlin in 2022. Fonyuy currently lectures on Heritage and Restitution at the University of Bamenda, Cameroon. He also recently authored Colonial Disruptions on African Cultural Heritage: Documenting the Ngonnso Restitution Saga from 1902-2024; a deep dive into the challenges and possibilities of African restitution, based on his experience with Ngonnso.
Affiliation(s): University of Bamenda
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Published Work: Colonial Disruptions on African Cultural Heritage: Documenting the Ngonnso Restitution Saga (1902-2024) ; Restitution and Digitization of African Cultural Heritage:Time to Decolonize and Reconceptualize African Preservation Spaces.
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Dr. Winani Thebele is a seasoned museum professional, curator and scholar. She offered her skills and knowledge to the Botswana National Museum for 34 years and retired from her role as Chief Curator and the Head of the Ethnology Division in June 2023. Throughout her tenure at the museum, Winani participated in global, regional and local debates and training around colonial collections – with an emphasis on African diasporic collections, in developing decolonised and inclusive museums, and in collaborative approaches to restitution. Her PhD thesis, which was completed through the University of the Witwatersrand, was titled The Migrated Museum: Restitution or a Shared Heritage? grappled with these aforementioned issues as opportunities for transforming the African museum. She has, through her work, also built an expansive network in the local and international cultural and heritage sectors.
Affiliation(s): Winza Heritage Logistics Botswana National Museum The Making African Connections Digital Archive
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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); Goodwill, Morality and Legislation in Restitution & Provenance Politics; a Reflection on Customary Laws and Property Ownership in Africa.
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Katrine Hoandi Vigne is a Namibian-Danish heritage practitioner. In 2018, she undertook a Master of Arts in Sustainable Heritage Management at the Aarhus University in Denmark. The focus of her dissertation, “Restitution of a whip and Bible – A postcolonial story of museum restitution”, was the contentious return of Hendrik Witbooi’s Whip and Bible to Namibia. As part of her Masters programme she took up a year long internship at the Museums Association of Namibia. At the time, 23 cultural belongings were being returned to Namibia, as part of a five year long restitution project called Confronting Colonial Pasts, Envision Creative Futures. She is in community with the close knit network of Namibian arts, culture and heritage practitioners who drove the dialogues, and implemented the experiments and outputs of this project.
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Dr. Martin Donlefack is a historian of civilisations and religions. He has been deeply involved in his community’s efforts to restitute their Tukah Mask over the last 7 years, as Chairman of the Technical Organising Committee for the ngim nu cultural festival, author of the “La sculpture africaine du visible à l’invisible : les enseignements du tukah des Bamendou au Cameroun”, and representative of the Bamendou community at the Cameroon Cultural Season in 2022.
Affiliation(s): University of Yaoundé I (Université de Yaoundé I)
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Published Work: La sculpture africaine du visible à l'invisible: Les enseignements du tukah des Bamendou au Cameroun
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Wandile Goozen Kasibe is a South African sociologist, museologist, visual artist, and former politician specializing in the decolonization of heritage institutions and the social construction of race. When studying towards his PhD in Sociology he gained prominence through his participation in the Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall student movements at the University of Cape Town, which sought to dismantle colonial symbols and address institutional racism and tuition barriers via protests and activism. While recognized for advancing decolonial perspectives in museology, Kasibe's advocacy has intersected with broader debates on cultural repatriation and ideological critiques of Western institutions, often emphasizing empirical challenges to historical narratives embedded in collections. He currently serves as the Director of Living Heritage in South Africa's Department of Sport, Arts and Culture.
Affiliation(s): Department of Sport, Arts and Culture (South Africa) University of Cape Town
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Published Work: Museums and the construction of race ideologies: the case of natural history and ethnographic museums in South Africa
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Temi Odumosu is an art historian, curator and Assistant Professor at the University of Washington Information School in Seattle, USA. Her international research and cultural practice is concerned with the representation of African peoples, visual and affective politics of slavery and colonialism, archives and archival practices, digitisation of cultural heritage, Afro-Diaspora aesthetics, and more broadly exploring how art mediates social transformation and healing. Her PhD thesis at the University of Cambridge explored the construction and use of African caricatures in British satirical prints during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This work provided the basis for her book Africans in English Caricature 1769-1819: Black Jokes, White Humour (2017).
Affiliation(s): Digital Benin University of Washington
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Published Work: The Crying Child: On Colonial Archives, Digitization, and Ethics of Care in the Cultural Commons
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"Dr. Oluwatoyin Zainab Sogbesan is an architect, cultural historian, museologist, and heritage consultant dedicated to advancing African-centered approaches to heritage preservation and museum practice. She holds a PhD in Culture, Policy and Management from City, University of London. She is the Founder and Director of the Àsà Heritage Africa Foundation, an organisation committed to safeguarding and reinterpreting Africa’s tangible and intangible cultural assets. She currently serves as President of ICOMOS Nigeria and Vice President of ICICH (International Scientific Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage, ICOMOS), positions through which she shapes national and global conversations on heritage conservation and policy. She is also a member of the Advisory Committee of Re:assemblage 2025–26, a platform rethinking archival practices for African and Afro-diasporic art institutions. Sogbesan has also served as a museum consultant for the European Union National Institute for Culture (EUNIC Nigeria Cluster) and has curated and advised on landmark initiatives, including the LagosPhoto Home Museum Project. Her influence extends to the international cultural arena, where she has been invited as a juror for prestigious photography and art awards and as a contributor to panels on restitution, decolonisation, and sustainable heritage. Her research and publications explore themes of decolonisation of museums, Yoruba palace architecture, restitution ethics, and community-led heritage documentation. Through her teaching, curatorial projects, and leadership, she champions inclusive and participatory heritage practices that foreground African voices while engaging with global audiences."
Affiliation(s): Àsà Heritage Africa Foundation International Council on Monuments and Sites
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Published Work: Reflections on the Customary Laws of Benin Kingdom and Its Living Cultural Objects in the Discourse of Ownership and Restitution; The potential of digital representation: The changing meaning of the Ife ‘bronzes’ from pre-colonial Ife to the post-colonial digital British Museum.
