[Commlist] Fwd: CFP: Visual Pasts Material Presents Archival Futures: Postcolonial temporalities in the making

*_Visual Pasts Material Presents Archival Futures: POSTCOLONIAL 
TEMPORALITIES IN THE MAKING_*

*Graduate conference (PhDs and ECRs) at University of East Anglia, 
Norwich, UK*

*19-20 May 2025*

/Supported by the CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership and the Sainsbury 
Research Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas/

*Call for Papers *

This conference aims to bring together current research on visual, 
material and archival collections and explore the ways in which their 
materiality is shaped by time and place. Held in museums and archives, 
objects, natural specimens, human remains, photographs, films, sounds, 
drawings, documents and more embody the disruption created by 
missionaries, militaries, colonial officers, scientists, explorers or 
humble travellers in territories which endured colonisation. Through the 
act of collecting, classifying, storing and exhibiting, museums, 
anthropology and imperial politics shaped an ethnographic present in 
order to dominate colonised peoples, whose own temporalities had no 
space to exist. This conference will explore how accessing archives and 
museum collections can enable communities to recover their past and 
rekindle “alternative stories” (Tuhiwai-Smith 1999) as well as disrupt 
the discourses constructed by Western views (Modest & Pels 2024). 
Speakers are encouraged to think about how current research and practice 
on visual, material and archival colonial collections can reveal what 
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay calls ‘potential histories’: ways of creating 
relationships with the past – through archives – which reject “the 
imperial apparatus” of colonisation (2019:43).

By looking at the ongoing engagement of museums and archives with their 
colonial legacy – with people and through research –, this conference 
aims to tackle the broader project of the postcolonial as not only a 
period but a new time-consciousness that recognises this entanglement of 
temporalities (Mbembe 2001). With this conference we would like to 
address the following questions: Which potential histories and futures 
do visual, material and archival collections hold? How do objects, 
images and archives relate to and shape notions of temporality? How can 
materiality reveal different versions of history and disrupt dominant 
narratives? What are the means through which alternative stories are 
revealed (contemporary arts, returns, collaborative projects, etc.)? Can 
they help reconsider the notions of colonial and postcolonial? How do 
these alternative narratives about materiality modify the spaces 
(museums, archives) in which collections are held?

*This conference is dedicated to PhD students and early-career 
researchers. *

We are delighted to welcome *Professor Wayne Modest* as our guest 
speaker. Director of content at the Wereldmuseum and Head of the 
Research Center for Material Culture, Wayne Modest will introduce his 
new co-edited book Museum Temporalities: Time, History and the Future of 
Ethnographic Museum (April 2025 release), the first of its kind tackling 
the theme of temporality in museum lives and practices.

All participants and attendees will need to register in advance.

Fees, accommodation and information details will be shared after the end 
of the call for papers

*To Submit a paper: *

This conference aims to be interdisciplinary (museum studies, 
anthropology, art history, archaeology, history, cultural studies) and 
address the following topics: - Colonial archives - 
Historical/ethnographic/natural history museum collections - Colonial 
photography/visual culture - Contemporary approaches to colonial 
collections and archives - Collaborations between museums, archives and 
related communities - Restitutions

Proposals should include an abstract of 300 words, the name and 
affiliation of the speaker and a short biography of no more than 200 
words, and be emailed to (humgrad.events /at/ uea.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(humgrad.events /at/ uea.ac.uk)>  by 10th January 2025 end of the day.

*Grants Available: *

We are pleased to announce that the Sainsbury Research Unit for the arts 
of Africa, Oceania and the Americas will be supporting three PhD 
students and/or ECRs by funding three awards to attend the event.

- Two grants worth approximately £300 will be awarded to UK or European 
PhD students or ECRs

- One grant worth approximately £800 will be awarded to an international 
PhD student or ECR

Applications for the grants must consist of the following:

- An abstract of no more than 300 words for your proposed paper - A 
biography of no more than 200 words

- A statement of no more than 200 words explaining why/how the 
attendance at the conference will be beneficial for your research

Proposals should be emailed to (humgrad.events /at/ uea.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(humgrad.events /at/ uea.ac.uk)> by 10th January 2025 end of the day

Any queries can be sent to (humgrad.events /at/ uea.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(humgrad.events /at/ uea.ac.uk)>

*About *

The conference is organised by *Clémentine Debrosse, Enzo Hamel and 
Garance Nyssen*, PhD students at the Sainsbury Research Unit for the 
Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas (SRU) at the University of East 
Anglia, in Norwich. Based in the Sainsbury Centre, the SRU is a 
multidisciplinary research centre in which faculty, visiting fellows, 
research associates, postdoctoral researchers and postgraduate students 
conduct research across the three regions in archaeology, anthropology, 
art history and museum studies.

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