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Koehun Aziz-Kamara is a writer, historian and archivist whose work addresses epistemological violence and archival silence born out of slavery and colonialism in West Africa and the broader Atlantic diaspora. She studied History at the University of Warwick and Caribbean and Latin American Studies at University College London. As Communications Associate at Open Restitution Africa, she leads the organisation's communications strategy, working to open up access to restitution knowledge and centre African communities and civil society in driving their own heritage narratives and restitution efforts. She is co-founder of Kol Pot, a digital-first platform dedicated to preserving Sierra Leonean (hi)stories, reducing barriers to archival access, and contributing to the reconstitution of identity in a postwar context. Her prior work as Programme Assistant at Reform Initiatives supported reparatory justice capacity-building across West Africa. Koehun's scholarship and practice sit at the intersection of historical justice, Black geographies, and the politics of belonging.
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Syokau Mutonga is a Research and Operations Associate at Open Restitution Africa, an open-data platform seeking to make visible African voices in the restitution debate. For the past decade, she has worked in the cultural heritage sector as an academic, writer, activist and curator, seeking to amplify community voices. Her work explores what it might look like to practice an articulation of Kenya’s painful and problematic past while also leaving it as multiple, unfinished and present. At Open Restitution Africa, she leads the operational side of the work while supporting the research department. Her research work includes putting together databases of key restitution issues, creating research frameworks and carrying out case studies that support the open data platform and empower all stakeholders to make knowledge-based decisions.
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Phumzile Nombuso Twala is a cultural and creative industries practitioner, writer, researcher, convenor and public engagement curator based in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is currently developing an interdisciplinary heritage, research and development praxis, informed by public engagement curating models. To this end, she is exploring arts, culture and heritage institutions, community engagement and development models through research and practice-led inquiry. She is a Senior Researcher at Andani.Africa, a cultural and creative economies research strategic advisory agency, where she contributes to a wide variety of research studies and projects. She is also Research Associate at Open Restitution Africa, a project focusing on centering Africa-centered restitution processes. ORA’s work is informed by the intersectionality of cultural heritage, research methodology and tech. She holds BCom Industrial and Organisational Psychology (UNISA), BA (Honours) Media Studies and Journalism (Wits University) and BA (Honours) History of Art (Wits University) degrees. Phumzile was on the Wits University Humanities 2021 Dean’s List and was awarded the Standard Bank Group Foundation of African Art Postgraduate Prize (2021) for Outstanding Achievement in Postgraduate African Art Studies. She has been appointed as a Board Member of the Funda Community College, where she leads on heritage research and alumni programming development at the institution.
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Suzana Sousa is an art curator and researcher focused on developing narratives and producing knowledge from the Global South through collaboration and experimentation. Over the past decade, her work has explored themes related to contemporary African art, cultural politics, and the construction of nationalisms and national discourses through culture and the visual arts. More recently, she has engaged with feminist curatorial practices and conducted research on the works of African women artists. She is currently completing a PhD at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, focusing on nation-building processes in Angola within the context of museums and the visual arts since 1975. She serves as a research fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape.
Affiliation(s): University of the Western Cape
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Published Work: Fighting over the Archive: Politics and Practice of the Art World in Angola
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Abiti Adebo Nelson is the co-investigator on the Un-archived horrors of slavery at Fort Patiko: Rethinking the historical narratives of slavery and slave trade in post-conflict northern Uganda project. He is also a curator for Ethnography and History at the Uganda National Museum. He is currently a PhD Candidate of History at the University of Western Cape in South Africa. Abiti has co-curated exhibitions on ‘Road to Reconciliation’, the Milk exhibition project in Uganda and Switzerland; and the recent ‘Unseen Archive of Idi Amin’ that opened at Uganda Museum 18th May 2019. Abiti’s research focuses on community memorials, restitution, ethnographic museums and transitional justice.
Affiliation(s): Uganda National Museum
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Published Work: Handling collections in the museum against cultural ethics; The Uganda Museum’s Tribal Representation: Colonial Repositories and Community Reconciliation in Uganda
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Patrick Mudekereza is a writer and cultural producer from in Lubumbashi, D.R. Congo. He is currently director of Waza, Centre d’art de Lubumbashi, previously known as Picha Art Centre. He co-founded and run the first three editions of Rencontres Picha, Lubumbashi Biennial. He was involved in several art projects, including the collective Vicanos Club, was editor of the cultural magazine Nzenze organised and participated in several exhibitions in Congo and abroad such as Congo Far West. He coordinated and edited publications such as Les Chroniques du Congo and exhibitions catalogues. His critical articles were published, among others, in African Art and Contemporary And. His last curatorial project Revolution Room/Chumba cha Mapinduzi, in collaboration with Visual Arts Network South Africa, explores the potentials of collaboration between artists and communities from the mining industries in Southern Congo and Johannesburg.
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Annelize Kotze is a Social History Curator at Iziko Museums and a powerful voice for decolonising heritage spaces. With a Master's degree in Archaeology from UCT, her work centres on the cultural identity of Khoe, San, and Coloured women. She serves as president of the Commonwealth Association of Museums (CAM) and chair of SAMA Western Cape. She sits on multiple commissions within UCT's A/Xarra Restorative Justice Forum. Annelize passionately advocates for the return of ancestral remains and artifacts and amplifies previously marginalised communities' voices in museum narratives.
Affiliation(s): Iziko Museums of South Africa
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Published Work: The bones are speaking: community engagement, Ancestral Remains and restoration
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Jinty Jackson is a researcher, writer, and communications consultant who works at the intersection of storytelling, justice, and urban change. She has worked with think tanks, international media, and grassroots organisations. Jinty worked with Open Restitution Africa to develop on insight on Inventories that was drawn from a study undertaken by ORA on behalf of the South African Cultural Observatory & the National Department of Sport, Arts and Culture in South Africa (2024).
Affiliation(s): Independent
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Robyn Humphreys is an Associate Lecturer in the Department of History, at the University of the Western Cape. She is completing her PhD in archaeology. Her research focuses the impact of archaeological practice on the relationship between communities and human remains from archaeological sites. She advocates for an accountable archaeology that acknowledges communities and community institutions as important stakeholders in managing human remains.
Affiliation(s): University of the Western Cape
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