The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, invites you to the first lecture in the Fall 2025 series of the Restitution and Reparation: Africa and the Post-Colonial Condition Fellowship. The lecture, titled “Whose Stories Are Told by Museums with African Collections from Colonial Contexts?”, will be delivered by Dr. Njabulo Chipangura, Assistant Professor of African Anthropology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, and inaugural recipient of the Fellowship. The session will be moderated by Dr. Rosette Sifa Vuninga, Fatema Mernissi Postdoctoral Fellow in Social and Cultural Studies at The Africa Institute.
Date & Time: Thursday, 30 October 2025, 12:30 PM
Location: The Africa Institute Auditorium (location map)
The session is free and open to the public.
Manchester Museum (MM), part of the University of Manchester, holds approximately 35,000 ethnographic collections, mostly taken from local communities and categorized by geographical region, including Africa, the Americas, Oceania, and Asia (Chipangura and Seabela 2025). The African collection is the largest, with over 15,000 provenanced objects and around 1,500 unprovenanced items labeled only as “Africa?”.
In this talk, Dr. Chipangura will explore what it means to relationally curate African collections within a colonial context, emphasizing collaboration and access for diaspora African communities as part of decolonial solidarities in action. He will present an empirical practice of decolonisation informed by relational care and the concept of the disobedient museum, based on his curatorial work between 2022–2025.
He will discuss the Africa Day Celebration hosted at the museum in May 2024, showing how the collections were used to engage African diaspora communities in dialogue. Drawing on Message’s (2018) concept of the “disobedient museum,” Dr. Chipangura highlights a model that prioritizes engagement with formerly marginalized communities outside traditional academic or disciplinary constraints. This approach rethinks how museums can address contemporary social and political issues in their local environments.
Njabulo Chipangura is the inaugural recipient of the Restitution and Reparation: Africa and the Post-Colonial Condition Fellowship at The Africa Institute. He is Assistant Professor of African Anthropology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, specializing in museum anthropology and heritage studies.
Previously, he served as Curator of Anthropology at Manchester Museum, University of Manchester (2022–2025), and as Curator of Archaeology at the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe, Mutare Museum (2009–2020). He earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
Dr. Chipangura’s research critically examines colonial legacies in museums and advocates collaborative, community-centered methodologies. His publications include Museums as Agents for Social Change (Routledge, 2021) and Race, Genetics, History: New Practices, New Approaches (Cambridge University Press, 2025). He serves on the editorial boards of Museum International and Museum and Society (Managing Editor) and is a board member of ICOM’s Collections Committee (COMCOL) and the curatorial advisory committee for Museum Lab, Nat Kunde Museum, Germany.
Rosette Sifa Vuninga is a Fatema Mernissi Postdoctoral Fellow in Social and Cultural Studies at The Africa Institute. Her research focuses on migration, transborder politics of identity and belonging, homeland politics and activism, transnationalism, and the translocality of conflicts, particularly in Congolese communities in South Africa. She also studies youth networks of violence, economies of insecurity, and postcolonial representations of identity and national belonging through popular culture. Read more.
The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, invites you to the first lecture in the Fall 2025 series of the Restitution and Reparation: Africa and the Post-Colonial Condition Fellowship. The lecture, titled “Whose Stories Are Told by Museums with African Collections from Colonial Contexts?”, will be delivered by Dr. Njabulo Chipangura, Assistant Professor of African Anthropology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, and inaugural recipient of the Fellowship. The session will be moderated by Dr. Rosette Sifa Vuninga, Fatema Mernissi Postdoctoral Fellow in Social and Cultural Studies at The Africa Institute.
The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, invites you to the first lecture in the Fall 2025 series of the Restitution and Reparation: Africa and the Post-Colonial Condition Fellowship. The lecture, titled “Whose Stories Are Told by Museums with African Collections from Colonial Contexts?”, will be delivered by Dr. Njabulo Chipangura, Assistant Professor of African Anthropology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, and inaugural recipient of the Fellowship. The session will be moderated by Dr. Rosette Sifa Vuninga, Fatema Mernissi Postdoctoral Fellow in Social and Cultural Studies at The Africa Institute.
Date & Time: Thursday, 30 October 2025, 12:30 PM
Location: The Africa Institute Auditorium (location map)
The session is free and open to the public.
Manchester Museum (MM), part of the University of Manchester, holds approximately 35,000 ethnographic collections, mostly taken from local communities and categorized by geographical region, including Africa, the Americas, Oceania, and Asia (Chipangura and Seabela 2025). The African collection is the largest, with over 15,000 provenanced objects and around 1,500 unprovenanced items labeled only as “Africa?”.
In this talk, Dr. Chipangura will explore what it means to relationally curate African collections within a colonial context, emphasizing collaboration and access for diaspora African communities as part of decolonial solidarities in action. He will present an empirical practice of decolonisation informed by relational care and the concept of the disobedient museum, based on his curatorial work between 2022–2025.
He will discuss the Africa Day Celebration hosted at the museum in May 2024, showing how the collections were used to engage African diaspora communities in dialogue. Drawing on Message’s (2018) concept of the “disobedient museum,” Dr. Chipangura highlights a model that prioritizes engagement with formerly marginalized communities outside traditional academic or disciplinary constraints. This approach rethinks how museums can address contemporary social and political issues in their local environments.
Njabulo Chipangura is the inaugural recipient of the Restitution and Reparation: Africa and the Post-Colonial Condition Fellowship at The Africa Institute. He is Assistant Professor of African Anthropology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, specializing in museum anthropology and heritage studies.
Previously, he served as Curator of Anthropology at Manchester Museum, University of Manchester (2022–2025), and as Curator of Archaeology at the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe, Mutare Museum (2009–2020). He earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
Dr. Chipangura’s research critically examines colonial legacies in museums and advocates collaborative, community-centered methodologies. His publications include Museums as Agents for Social Change (Routledge, 2021) and Race, Genetics, History: New Practices, New Approaches (Cambridge University Press, 2025). He serves on the editorial boards of Museum International and Museum and Society (Managing Editor) and is a board member of ICOM’s Collections Committee (COMCOL) and the curatorial advisory committee for Museum Lab, Nat Kunde Museum, Germany.
Rosette Sifa Vuninga is a Fatema Mernissi Postdoctoral Fellow in Social and Cultural Studies at The Africa Institute. Her research focuses on migration, transborder politics of identity and belonging, homeland politics and activism, transnationalism, and the translocality of conflicts, particularly in Congolese communities in South Africa. She also studies youth networks of violence, economies of insecurity, and postcolonial representations of identity and national belonging through popular culture. Read more.
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