Short Abstract

This panel explores the decolonisation of Portuguese and Spanish museums through African collections, provenance research, diasporic voices and contested narratives, asking who defines communities, constructs knowledge and determines how colonial heritage is interpreted and governed.

Long Abstract

Museums in Portugal and Spain hold extensive collections originating from colonial encounters in Africa, yet the histories, epistemologies and power relations embedded in these collections remain unevenly addressed. The momentum generated internationally by Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 Ouagadougou speech and the 2018 Sarr-Savoy report placed restitution and the transformation of European museums firmly on the political and institutional agenda. A decade later, it encounters new forms of political resistance, including the resurgence of imperial nostalgia and the growing influence of far-right and nationalist discourses.

This panel examines what decolonising Iberian museums might mean in this changing context. It considers provenance research, restitution and repatriation, exhibition practices and the role of African diasporas whose histories, identities and cultural relationships are implicated in museum collections and narratives. The panel asks who has the authority to speak for the communities associated with an object, and how such communities are identified, represented or potentially essentialised. Following the questions posed by the ECAS2027 theme it investigates how museums negotiate competing forms of knowledge, memory and belonging. It asks whether current practices are opening museums towards more plural and reciprocal forms of knowledge production, or reproducing colonial hierarchies in new forms.

The panel welcomes recently completed and ongoing projects, as well as emerging lines of research and future-oriented approaches, inviting contributions that critically reflect on current practices while exploring possible pathways for institutional transformation. To this aim, the panel accepts papers from different disciplines including museum curators and technical staff.

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