Hande A. Birkalan-Gedik

Racial anthropology, emerging in (post-)colonial contexts, first developed in Europe and North America before spreading globally. Responding to the renewed calls for overcoming the legacies of colonialism, imperialism and racism in anthropology, the workshop examines the transnational afterlives of scientific racism in all fields of anthropology. The focus is the transnational and transcolonial contexts and impact of the tradition at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics (KWI-A), Berlin. Founded by German anthropologists researching German colonies in Africa and, in Germany that shaped Nazi eugenicist policies, KWI-A trained researchers from Europe/Asia/Latin America, who later adapted racial frameworks to their national contexts. Taking the discussion on scientific racism to new planes, the workshop uncovers the underexplored transcolonial formations/transnational circulations of racial knowledge through travelling racial anthropologists and material manifestations that brought “race” into and from centers of racial research such as the KWI-A. By engaging with the recently inaugurated exhibition about the KWI-A, we aim to discuss approaches to remember, address and overcome anthropology’s racist and (trans)colonial histories and legacies, seeking to anchor all fields of anthropology in decolonial and anti-racist trajectories at the premises of the KWIA’s historical site and introduce a newly exhibition on workshop topic.