Organisers of African Pedagogies of Restitution: Return, Repair, Rehumanisation, the 2027 ACIP Workshop (clockwise from top): Asher Gamedze, Bianca van Laun, Aidan Erasmus,
Koni Benson, and Robyn Humphreys.
The African Critical Inquiry Programme (ACIP) is pleased to announce that the 2027 ACIP Workshop will be African Pedagogies of Restitution: Return, Repair, Rehumanisation. The project was proposed by organisers Koni Benson, Aidan Erasmus, Robyn Humphreys, Asher Gamedze, and Bianca van Laun, all based in the Department of Historical Studies at University of the Western Cape. African Pedagogies of Restitution will be hosted at the Iyatsiba Lab of the Centre for Humanities Research in Cape Town, South Africa in March 2027.
African Pedagogies of Restitution: Return, Repair, Rehumanisation
In recent years, the global discourse on restitution, reparation, and return has gained renewed urgency across academic, cultural, and political arenas. Emerging from a longer history of anti-colonial struggle, restitution today signals not only the return of ancestral remains and cultural objects, but the critical process of rehumanisation in response to African dehumanisation through colonial and scientific exploitation. Rooted in the work of scholars, artists, and activists, restitution has become a transdisciplinary, international movement. South Africa’s post-apartheid intellectual tradition and Namibia’s engagement with Germany over the Nama-Herero genocide offer distinct yet intertwined contributions, emphasising restitution as repair rather than mere return. African Pedagogies of Restitution: Return, Repair, Rehumanisation will be a 3-day workshop between the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and the University of Namibia (UNAM), to map this shared intellectual work on the question of restitution towards pedagogical goals. The workshop will consolidate and extend current work by facilitating engagement on important aspects of restitution in our shared context and their implications for joint research, curriculum development in African heritage, restitution, museology, and capacity building, building on the idea of restitution as both scholarly inquiry and activist practice and driven by a collective community of practice. Both institutions have shared ongoing anti-colonial commitments and ongoing restitution efforts to repatriate and reclaim African ancestral remains, archives, and cultural objects from colonial-era holdings. Ultimately, the project seeks to reimagine Pan-African restitution politics and practices by creating a sustainable community of practice across national and disciplinary boundaries. It aims to connect fragmented efforts, foster pedagogical and policy innovation, and contribute to the remaking of African futures grounded in justice, memory, and dignity.
Founded in 2012, the African Critical Inquiry Programme (ACIP) is a partnership between the Centre for Humanities Research at University of the Western Cape in Cape Town and the Laney Graduate School of Emory University in Atlanta. Supported by donations to the Ivan Karp and Corinne Kratz Fund, the ACIP fosters thinking and working across public cultural institutions, across disciplines and fields, and across generations. It seeks to advance inquiry and debate about the roles and practice of public culture, public cultural institutions, and public scholarship in shaping identities and society in Africa through an annual ACIP workshop and through the Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards, which support African doctoral students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences enrolled at South African universities.
Information about applying to organize the 2028 ACIP workshop and for the 2027 Ivan Karp Doctoral Research Awards will be available in November 2026. The deadline for both workshop applications and student applications is 3 May 2027.
For further information, see https://gs.emory.edu/guides/students/acip.html and https://www.facebook.com/ivan.karp.corinne.kratz.fund.
