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Museum &
Heritage Studies

Coordination
Members
Associated Members
  • Michi Knecht (University of Bremen)
  • Goodman Gwasira (UNAM, Windhoek)
  • Badiha Nahass (Université Mohammed V, Rabat)
  • Ciraj Rassool (University of the Western Cape)
  • Nina ter Laan
  • Nanette Snoep (Director, Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum)
  • Simone Pfeifer

ReMMaP Research in Memory, Museum and Postmigrant Societies

Heritage is inherently ambivalent. It can create meaning and belonging, contribute to processes of identity formation, inspire imagination and creativity, and become a resource for dialogue, reconciliation and social justice. At the same time, it can reproduce exclusions and inequalities, while also providing grounds for contestation and resistance. These tensions are not external to heritage but part of the ways in which it is continually constructed, negotiated and transformed. ReMMaP explores this ambivalence, asking how heritage can both sustain and challenge established narratives, identities and relations of power in museums and postmigrant societies.

ReMMaP stands for “Research in Museums, Memory and Postmigrant Societies”. Our research collective asks how histories of power, violence and movement have shaped what societies choose to collect, preserve, remember and inherit — and how these histories continue to shape museums, memory and heritage today. It brings together research on collecting and provenance, colonialism and restitution, violence and displacement, and the entangled histories of heritage, memory and National Socialism. At the heart of our work are questions of injustice, restitution and reconciliation, as well as the ways heritage is transformed by migration, mobility and changing forms of belonging. ReMMaP is particularly interested in the legacies of European imperialism, colonialism and fascism, and in the systems of mapping, classification and categorisation through which people, places and objects were ordered and controlled. These histories are not confined to the past: they continue to shape whose heritage is valued, who has the authority to interpret it, and how relationships between the Global North and Global South are negotiated, reimagined and transformed today.

Our understanding is that postmigrant societies are also shaped by the histories, experiences and knowledge of the Global South through migration and mobility, making the Global South not only a geographical reference but also an integral part of the social and cultural realities of postmigrant societies. If these histories and perspectives are already present within European societies, what does this mean for the future of museums and heritage institutions and the histories and memories they preserve? At the same time, ReMMaP is interested in how heritage is negotiated, valued and transformed in the Global South itself, and in the diverse concepts, practices and futures of heritage that emerge from these contexts.

A particular focus is on the unequal histories and ongoing relationships through which collections, knowledge and heritage have been created and circulated. Research on colonial collections and provenance, restitution and reconciliation asks how these histories can be critically addressed, while also exploring how more equitable forms of collaboration, exchange and knowledge production between the Global North and the Global South might be developed.

At the same time, ReMMaP looks beyond heritage as a record of human histories. Through research on heritage ecologies, heritage epistemologies and critical digital heritage, we explore different ways of knowing, the relationships between people, material culture and their environments, and the ways digital technologies are transforming how heritage is produced, shared and encountered. Heritage publics are equally important: who participates in defining heritage, whose memories and knowledge are represented, and how can museums, collections and heritage sites become more open, inclusive and democratic spaces for participation, dialogue and belonging?

In this way, ReMMaP understands heritage not simply as something inherited from the past, but as a dynamic and ambivalent field in which societies negotiate knowledge, memory, identity, responsibility and possible futures across and between the Global North and the Global South. Heritage can sustain established narratives and relations of power, but it can also create spaces for recognition, belonging, resistance, reconciliation and new forms of social and cultural connection.

Topics under Discussion:

  • Museums and Memory in Postmigrant Societies

  • History of Collecting and Provenance Research

  • Colonialism, Violence and Restitution

  • Heritage and National Socialism

  • Injustice, Restitution, Reconciliation

  • Heritage Ecologies

  • Heritage, Mobility and Migration

  • Heritage Epistemologies

  • Critical Digital Heritage

  • Heritage Publics

 

Cross-Cutting Themes

All areas are united through three cross-cutting themes:

Knowledge

Projects examine and scrutinize the epistemic foundations and history of heritage and its related disciplines with regard to alternative epistemic practices. They ask how knowledge has been produced, organised and authorised, and how different ways of knowing can be recognised and brought into dialogue.

Socialities

They analyse processes of inclusion and exclusion and develop possibilities for a comprehensive decolonisation and democratisation of museums, collections and heritage sites. This includes asking who has access to heritage, who participates in decisions about its meaning and care, and how more equitable forms of cooperation can be developed.

Ecologies

We also explore more-than-human forms of co-existence in the Anthropocene through a new survey of museums, collections, and (natural) heritage sites to put colonial and post/colonial extractivism into focus. This perspective connects heritage with the environments, materials, species and resources through which histories of extraction and colonialism continue to shape the present.

Current Activities

  • Heritage Lecture: Whose Monuments? Algeria and the Afterlives of French Colonialism A lecture based on Monuments Decolonized: Algeria’s French Colonial Heritage (Susan Slyomovics, Rautenstrach Joest Museum), 03 November 2026, 18:00 pm

  • Heritage Slams: Discussion of work in progress and ReMMaP Festive Drinks 09 December, 2026 (titles to be anounced)

     

Past Activities

Lectures

  • 23 September 2026: Going beyond Extractivist Practices: Round table and discussions with David Castaner (art historian, Université Paris 1), Lotte Arndt (art historian, Université Paris 1), Christel Pesme (conservator, bibliothèque de Genève). Chair: Tiziana Nicoletta Beltrame (anthropologist, Université Paris 1)

  • 25 September 2026: Contesting the Repercussions of State Sanctioned Slave Trade: Renaming a Gallery? Round table and discussions with Alexandre Girard Muscagorry, Vivian Braga dos Santos, Coralie de Souza Vernay (tbc), Lotte Arndt

  • 12 November 2025: Magic matters: The Hay archive of Coptic spells on leather with Elisabeth R. O’Connell (Byzantine World Curator, The British Museum, London)
Conferences and Workshops
  • Heritage Week Bonn: Ecologies of Restitution: Relational and More-than-Human Approaches to Repair into the translocal lives of plants, 6 June 2026
  • Workshop: Provenance Resonance, Douala, 29 May 2026 (Organiser: Anna Brus)
  • Reversed Provenance Research/Reversed Art Histories in collaboration with Papua New Guinea National Museum and Art Gallery, Port Moresby, September 2, 2025
  • Workshop: Embracing the future together. Reflections on genuine collaboration in repatrition and restitution. November 21, 2023 (Dany Adone)
  • Conference: Decentring the Museum for a Postmigrant Society, International Conference, University of Cologne, November 17, 2023 (Nina Möntmann in co-operation with Sabine Dahl Nielsen)
  • Zur Restitution von Objekten aus Kolonialismus und Nationalsozialismus. Historische Rechts- und Eigentumsvorstellungen, Gießen, Justus-Liebig-Universität 12.7.-14.7. 2023 (funded by the Thyssen Foundation) (Ulrike Lindner with Simone Derix, Uni Erlangen-Nürnberg, Prof. BeUna Brockmeyer, Universität Gießen)
  • Archaeology and society, 30 June to 2 July 2023, international conference, University of Cologne (co-funding: GSSC) (Richard Bussmann)
  • Decentring Restitution, Monday 26 June 2023, International Workshop, University of Cologne (Martin Zillinger, Richard Bussmann)
  • Extractivism in Past and Present: Mass-Extraction of Artefacts from Papua New Guinea during German Colonial Rule and Ressource Extractivism Today Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum June 5-7, in cooperation with U Bremen IFEK, African Programme in Museums and Cultural Heritage, University of the Western Cape, National Museum and University of Port Moresby, Divine Word University Medeng, Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, GSSC, Dept. of Social Anthropology and Dept. of Art History, UoC (Anna Brus; Michi Knecht, Martin Zillinger)
  • The Imperial Museum, Workshop (ECAS) (Ciraj Rassool and Martin Zillinger), May 31 2023)
  • Museum Struggles: The Transforming Museum and Its Publics, (ECAS), June 1 2023 (Martin Zillinger and Ciraj Rassool),
  • New Museologies in Africa, (ECAS), June 2 2023 (Anna Brus and Susanna Soussa)
Performances, Installations and Outreach
  • Film-Screening, Talk and Performance „A Homecoming of Sorts“ & “The Vocal Museum” with Artist Masello Motana, Goethe Institute Johannesburg, 19.09.2023 (Anna Brus)
  • The Diaspora Experiment: A collective sound space on musical memories of diaspora communities in NRW  (with artist in residence Masello Motana), 4.07.2023, Katakomben Theater Essen, 6.07.2023 Forum Unser Ebertplatz (Anna Brus, Martin Zillinger) (Funding: Wissenschalsforum zu Köln und Essen, City of Cologne)
  • Curatorial Projects “The Entire Story Starts Where. Anschlüsse und Ausschlüsse translokaler Positionen“ (Graduiertenkolleg anschliessen-ausschliessen (Funding: DFG) (in Cooperation with Akademie der Künste der Welt (ADKDW), Filmhaus Köln, GLASMOOG, Unser Ebertplatz, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Temporary Gallery), May 12 – July 2 2023. (Sandra Kurfürst, Nina Möntmann (UoC) with Carolin Höfler (TH Köln)
  • The Contested Legacy of Black Consciousness in Azania (Lecture Performance with artist in residence Masello Motana), June 16 2023 (Funding: Wissenschalsforum zu Köln und Essen) (Anna Brus) hhps://artist-residency.uni-koeln.de/the-contested- legacy-of-black-consciousness-in-azania
  • Public Panel Discussion: The Transforming Museum and its Publics. Rautenstrauch- Joest Museum (ECAS Conference), June 2, 2023 (Ciraj Rassool and Martin Zillinger) (Funding: GSSC, DFG, City of Cologne)
  • The Counter Museum (Lecture Performance with artist in residence Masello Motana), 31.5. 2023 (Funding: Wissenschalsforum zu Köln und Essen / City of Cologne) (Anna Brus) hhps://artist-residency.uni-koeln.de/the-counter-museum
  • Re/despair. Intervention in der Ausstellung des Rautenstrauch-Joest Museums (mit Studierenden der Universitäten Köln, Bremen und Western Cape) 22.05.-12.06.2023 (Funding: International Office, UoC, DAAD, Research- and Teaching Playorm World of Contradiction, University Bremen) (Anna Brus, Ciraj Rassool, Martin Zillinger)
  • Cologne Crossroads Conversation No.1 with Bénédicte Savoy (Berlin) and Ciraj Rassool (Cape Town). (Watch Full Video here)
 
Teaching

ReMMaP members are involved in a range of regular and special heritage related teaching activities at UzK and internationally, such as:

Heritage Slams

Discussion of work in progress 15.7.2026

  • Alexander van Wickeren, Activist Witnessing: South African Musicians in Western Europe during Apartheid, 1960s-1990s

  • Katrin Kindermann, Shumon Hussain: Die Sammlungen der Prähistorischen Archäologie an der Universität zu Köln 

  • Michael Bollig, Franz Krause: Revitalising Intangible Cultural Heritage for Environmental Resilience 

  • Anna Brus, Performing Restitution. CATPC and the Return of Balot

 

If you are interested in presenting at the next heritage slam, please get in touch.