Rebecca Rogers Ackermann

Since its inception, the discipline of palaeoanthropology in Africa has been intertwined with colonial pursuits, race science and racism. Recent efforts to confront this legacy have shown that a systematic transformation is needed, including training and supporting local scientists to aid capacity building, combatting “helicopter science”, and working with and for local communities. However, while there has been general support for transformation in the discipline, what is currently lacking is a roadmap for how this can be accomplished. This workshop will explore how palaeoanthropologists working in Africa can engage more substantially with socially responsive practice as a means for decolonizing and transforming the discipline. Participants will include researchers at African institutions and Africans across the diaspora who conduct research on the continent, as well as a small number of additional researchers from outside of this group to contribute critical perspectives. A key goal is to co-create best practice guidelines to help researchers move away from extractive science and a unidirectional dissemination of knowledge (e.g. talks, displays) to an engaged and more ethical research practice that shifts the way palaeoanthropology is done, so that the discipline itself is transformed.