Paper short abstract:

A citizen science project of the CNR-ILIESI, in collaboration with the Italian public institutions that preserve and disseminate the colonial heritage, aimed to define new methodologies for communicating the history of Italy's colonial heritage.

Paper long abstract:

In 2021, the Italian Minister of Culture created, for the first time, a working group to study issues related to colonial collections. The consequence of this delay is that today anthropologists, sociologists, historians, artists, writers, musicians, activists and members of local communities are called upon to fill the gaps left by politics. In this context, in 2023 my research institution, the CNR-ILIESI, launched a project and a scientific collaboration agreement, of which I am the scientific coordinator, with the Italian public institutions that preserve the heritage of the colonial period, which aims to answer a series of questions that can no longer be neglected: how were colonial collections acquired? what is the history of these collection campaigns? in what political conditions did they take place? What is the relationship between museum institutions and colonial collections? Has the colonial experience influenced both the scientific lexicon and the ethnographic gaze of the Italian ethno-anthropological disciplines born between 1800 and 1900?

The ultimate goal of the project, and its educational activities, is to define new methodologies for telling the story of Italian colonial collections. The innovative aspect of the project is that it takes into account not only the colonial objects preserved in Italian museums, but also the archival heritage, which often preserves documents that are not easily accessible to the public, in a cross-analysis approach and with the active participation of citizens.