Laura Burocco

This workshop brings together anthropologists, artists, and community leaders from Lusophone African countries, Brazil, and their diasporas to share experiences of restitution and repair connected to colonial collections, contested history, and intangible heritage through critical anthropological inquiry. It examines how colonial histories shape lives, memories and political struggles of African and diasporic communities in relation to the former colonial power. Placing Lisbon as key in the Black Atlantic it questions state cultural and academic institutions racialised hierarchies, and how situated knowledge and community engagement can reconfigure academic and geopolitical power relations within a epistemic justice framework. Core sessions focus ethnographic case studies and debates on Legal and Diplomatic; De-thingification; Inclusive Approaches to Restitution; Accessing Academic and Museum Institutions. Each participant will have equal opportunity to share experiences, including concerns and challenges. The closing public event will present the main results to diasporic neighbourhood communities, bringing together scholars, artists and residents. The workshop combines anthropological methods with community-based dialogue, bridging academic analysis and lived experience. The long-term objective is drafting guideline principles for future work in the Lusophone African and Brazilian context, reinforcing the Lusophone presence in global debates on restitution and reparation, both in academia and in the public domain. PI – Laura Burocco, Centre for Research in Anthropology (CRIA) at Lisbon University Institute – Iscte. Co-organizer: Francisca Alves Cardoso, CRIA – Centre for Research in Anthropology (CRIA) at Nova University Lisbon. Catarina Simão visual artist, architect, and researcher with long-term collaborative research into archive and contemporary history of Mozambique.