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"Karen Byera Ijumba has worked at the intersection of research, culture, creativity and digital knowledge management for over 10 years; interchangeably serving as a trained physical and digital archivist, researcher and academic research project manager. She holds an LLB and BA (Hons) in Heritage and Public Culture from the University of Cape Town (South Africa), and an MA in Arts and Culture Management from the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa). She enjoys encountering different ways of being, looking at things as puzzles and maps, and thinking through how bits come together under one nuanced conceptual umbrella. Her work focuses on combining marginalised and fugitive knowledge with creative and digital tools, to address knowledge gaps and issues of power and perspective in knowledge production. She was awarded the NRF Innovation Masters Scholarship in 2016, and jointly received the (NI)HSS Creative Collections - Best Public Performance Award in 2023, for her co-curation of the hybrid 26th Poetry Africa Festival. She also led the development of the Poetry Africa Digital Map. As Senior Researcher at Open Restitution Africa her core responsibilities included working in collaboration with the project's co-founders / Digital and Research leads to conceptualise, develop and evaluate methodologies that embrace the complexities of building an Africa-centred restitution knowledge base and datasets, supporting the design and content population of the open data platform, and overseeing the work of the core and seasonal research team members."
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Prof. Forget Chaterera-Zambuko is an Assistant Professor at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi with over 15 years of experience in teaching, research, and academic leadership in archival science, records management, and museum studies. Her research explores digital curation, sustainable digital records management, blockchain and AI in records management systems, and the politics of displaced and migrated archives. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Comma, the journal of the International Council on Archives (ICA), and a member of the ICA’s Advocacy Expert Group. Her work has received multiple international recognitions, including the 2020 Digital Preservation Award by the Dutch Digital Heritage Network for Teaching and Communications, the 2020 United States National Digital Stewardship Alliance Innovation Award (Category: Educators), and a Y2 researcher rating from South Africa’s National Research Foundation. Her leadership extends to serving as Programme Chair for the 2024 Archival Education and Research Institute and contributing to SUAD’s initiative on Electronic Document and Records System. Dr Chaterera-Zambuko has an interdisciplinary lens to heritage and information governance and is committed to fostering inclusive, technologically resilient archival futures
Affiliation(s): Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi
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Published Work: Real and Imagined Archives: The Emotional Impact of Zimbabwe’s Displaced Rhodesian Army Archives; Lost Unities: An Exhibition for Archival Repatriation ; Lost Unities
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Ivan Munhamu Murambiwa (20 October 1965 - 7 August 2021) was a distinguished teacher, archaeologist, and archivist who contributed significantly to the growth and development of the National Archives of Zimbabwe and the broader archival community in Zimbabwe, and across the continent. Murambiwa held and a BA Honours in History and a Masters in Business Administration, both from University of Zimbabwe, as well as a Master of Philosophy (Heritage Management) from Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge (UK), which he earned after being awarded the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust Scholarship in 1990. Murambiwa joined the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe (NMMZ) where he worked in various capacities including inter-alia, Curator of Archaeology, Heritage Programme Coordinator and Regional Director for the Eastern Region (Manicaland) between 1997 to 2000. In 2000 he was promoted to Director of National Archives of Zimbabwe at a prime age of 35, a post he held until his untimely death on 07 August 2021. Ivan Munhamu Murambiwa's leadership exemplified bravery and resilience in the face of sanctions at the National Archives of Zimbabwe. He spearheaded a number of initiatives including capacity building for records and archive management through tertirary institutions, and the digitisation of endangered and rare materials in the archival collection. He also invited a diversity of perspectives into the archive through projects like 'Capturing a Fading National Memory' and the 'One Nation, One Zimbabwe Project'. Regionally and internationally, he was a leading voice in the field of Records and Archives Management. He was a member of the International Council, Secretary General of SADC Association of Museums and Monuments (SADCAMM), and was twice-elected President of ESARBICA, enhancing regional collaboration. He actively advocated for the repatriation of migrated and dispersed archives back to their countries of origin. In 2011, he successfully led the demand for the repatriation of the Rhodesia Cabinet Files, which had been smuggled out of Zimbabwe to South Africa in the late 1970s, amidst the collapse of United Democratic Front's white-minority rule.
Affiliation(s): National Archives of Zimbabwe Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Branch of International Council on Archives (ESARBICA) National University of Science and Technology (NUST) Unversity of Zimbabwe
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Published Work: Archiving to the last archivist standing: the National Archives of Zimbabwe under sanctions
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Livingstone Muchefa is a curatorial and archiving expert, who is currently serving as the Operations and Administration Manager at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe. He previously worked at the National Archives of Zimbabwe, from 2008 – 2020, where he ended his tenure as Chief Archivist. He remains deeply tied to the professional archival network in Zimbabwe, and their pursuit to repatriate the country’s migrated archival collections.
Affiliation(s): National Gallery of Zimbabwe
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Published Work: Zimbabwe’s Economic Decline, Archives Access Regimes, Professionalism, and Their Impact on Researcher-Archivist Relations at the National Archives of Zimbabwe
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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.
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Achille Mbembe is currently Research Professor at WiSER, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Today, Achille Mbembe figures as the most renown philosopher, political theorist, and public intellectual of the African continent and won several outstanding prizes. His most important works are: Les jeunes et l’ordre politique en Afrique noire (1985) ; La naissance du maquis dans le Sud-Cameroun (1920-1960); Histoire des usages de la raison en colonie (1996); De la postcolonie. Essai sur l’imagination politique dans l’Afrique contemporaine (2000); Sortir de la grande nuit : Essai sur l’Afrique décolonisée (2003); Critique de la raison nègre (2013); Politique de l’inimitié (2016). Most of his books have been translated into English and German.
Affiliation(s): University of the Wiwatersrand
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Published Work: The Capacity for Truth: Of “Restitution” in African Systems of Thought
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Chao Tayiana Maina is a Kenyan historian and digital heritage specialist with a unique expertise at the intersection of memory, digital humanities, and public education. Leveraging a background in computing and a specialisation in heritage studies, her work is dedicated to exploring and excavating African histories, while simultaneously building and enhancing the infrastructure needed for the preservation and dissemination of these vital pasts. She is founder of African Digital Heritage, co-founder of the Museum of British Colonialism, and co-founder of the Open Restitution Africa project. She is a fellow at Yale University’s Institute of Cultural Heritage Preservation and was selected as a public historian in residence at the University of Luxembourg’s Centre for Contemporary and Digital History.
Affiliation(s): African Digital Heritage Open Restitution Africa
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Published Work: Where is the Seeker Who Searches for Another? Decolonial Approaches to Digital Public History
"Karen Byera Ijumba has worked at the intersection of research, culture, creativity and digital knowledge management for over 10 years; interchangeably serving as a trained physical and digital archivist, researcher and academic research project manager. She holds an LLB and BA (Hons) in Heritage and Public Culture from the University of Cape Town (South Africa), and an MA in Arts and Culture Management from the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa). She enjoys encountering different ways of being, looking at things as puzzles and maps, and thinking through how bits come together under one nuanced conceptual umbrella. Her work focuses on combining marginalised and fugitive knowledge with creative and digital tools, to address knowledge gaps and issues of power and perspective in knowledge production. She was awarded the NRF Innovation Masters Scholarship in 2016, and jointly received the (NI)HSS Creative Collections - Best Public Performance Award in 2023, for her co-curation of the hybrid 26th Poetry Africa Festival. She also led the development of the Poetry Africa Digital Map. As Senior Researcher at Open Restitution Africa her core responsibilities included working in collaboration with the project's co-founders / Digital and Research leads to conceptualise, develop and evaluate methodologies that embrace the complexities of building an Africa-centred restitution knowledge base and datasets, supporting the design and content population of the open data platform, and overseeing the work of the core and seasonal research team members."
