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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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Dr. Kiprop Lagat is the Director of Culture in the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Heritage. He holds a PhD in Anthropology and a master’s degree in Museology from the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom. His PhD thesis was on the memorialization of the 1998 Nairobi terror attack on the United States of America Embassy in Nairobi. Dr. Lagat has over 20 years of experience in the heritage sector and has participated in numerous projects focused on the research, documentation, preservation and curation of cultural practices and their associated heritage collections. He has previously worked as the Assistant Director in charge of the Nairobi National Museum and as a Principal Research Scientist in the Department of Cultural Heritage at the National Museums of Kenya. As Director of Culture, his responsibility is mainly to coordinate policies and programmes aimed at the preservation, promotion, and revitalization of Kenya’s rich and diverse cultural heritage resources for nationhood and sustainable development.
Affiliation(s): Director of Culture in the Ministry of Gender, Culture, The Arts and Heritage, National Museums of Kenya
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Published Work: Representations of Nationhood in the Displays of the National Museums of Kenya (NMK): The Nairobi National Museum
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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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Tuuda Haitula highlights the role of museums in the restitution process, viewing it as an opportunity for healing and reconnecting with cultural heritage. Until 2025, Tuuda worked as a Museum Development Officer at the Museums Association of Namibia (MAN), dedicated to nurturing the growth and resilience of museums across the country. Haitula plays a key role in supporting the development of Namibian heritage institutions, ensuring they remain sustainable and relevant.
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Goodman Gwasira is a historian of colonial archaeology and an expert on colonial cultural heritages, museum studies, prehistoric art and community engagement in Namibia and South Africa. He is an alumnus of the Culture and Environment in Africa (CEA) study programme at the University of Cologne and the Universities of Namibia and Cape Town. He worked as a curator of archaeology at the National Museum of Namibia. Currently he is a senior lecturer and coordinator of Archaeology and Heritage Studies in the Department of History at the University of Namibia. He also is part of the international cooperation / project Confronting Colonial Pasts, Envisioning Creative Futures – Collaborative Conservation and Knowledge Production of the Historical Collections from Namibia. His PhD investigated the History and critical analysis of Namibia’s archaeologies (2020). Goodman Gwasira also published, among many other texts, Rethinking the archaeology of the Dâures Mountain in a post-colonial context (2018).
Affiliation(s): University of Namibia
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Published Work: Towards a Decolonization of the Ethnographic Displays at the National Museum of Namibia
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Raphael Chikukwa is a Zimbabwean curator and the Executive Director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe since 2020. Prior to this, he was Chief Curator at the same institution and before that he has worked for a decade as an independent curator. He has also contributed in a number of Publications that includes Mowonero: Insights in Zimbabwean Contemporary Art, Zimbabwe Pavilion Catalogues (Seeing Ourselves 2011, Dudziro 2013, Pixels of Ubuntu/Unhu 2015, Deconstructing Boundaries 2017 and Soko Risina Musoro – A Tale Without. Head 2019) Kaboo Ka Muwala: Migration and Mobility Exhibition 2016
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Dr Wendy Black is currently the Chief Curator of Art & Social History and the Curator of Archaeology at Iziko Museums of South Africa. She specialises in the population history and bioarchaeology of the indigenous hunter-gatherer people of southern Africa, the Khoesan. Her research interests are broadly related to population dynamics and genetics, but more recently she has become involved with indigenous rights and transformation issues as they relate to human remains collections and group representations within South African institutions. She also participates in exhibition development and supervises postgraduate students.
Affiliation(s): Iziko Museums of South Africa
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Published Work: Hominin heritage: How institutional repositories are managing collections, collaboration and repatriation; The Southern African Human Remains Management Project: Making (p)reparations in year one ; 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)
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Hileni Ameinge is a young heritage professional with a background in Heritage Conservation and Management and Education, specialising in Arts and History, from the University of Namibia. Since 2023, she has been actively involved in cultural heritage, history, and decolonisation initiatives.
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Professor Francis Musonda teaches at the University of Zambia. Previously, he was employed by the Zambia National Museums Board at the Livingstone Museum, where he was the head of the Humanities and Social Sciences Department comprising Archaeology, History, Ethnography and Art. This department plays a central role in documenting and interpreting the country's development. His research interests are in African prehistory, concentrating on the transition from hunting/gathering to food production and on ethnoarchaeology.
Affiliation(s): University of Zambia
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Published Work: Decolonising the Broken Hill Skull: Cultural Loss and a Pathway to Zambian Archaeological Sovereignty
