Makerere University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHUSS) academic core team has spent the whole day at Fairway Hotel in Kampala in a Symposium trying to assess and guide on different pieces of work (abstracts) developed by different researchers within ‘Archiving, Memory and Method from the Global South’ Project as the college eyes for the mega International Conference.
The project aims to enhance how people archive/keep their information after realizing there is a lot of written pieces work across the population, but how are they documenting it, how is their work being so easily accesses and then to whom are they giving this material?.
The symposium is a precursor of the upcoming mega ‘Archiving, Memory and Method International Conference that will be running between (17-19)th October, 2024’ which will see vast research papers presented.
Important to note.
The project team received over 75 abstracts from scholars allover the world. The CHUSS core team of 15 has today participated in reviewing them to ensure they are clear and smart for presentation at the International Conference. These will be a second deliverable and are poised to be published in Makerere University Journal upon receiving final comments at the conference.
The first deliverable of the project is a book chapter and each of the members of the core team has contributed a chapter individually. The book, it’s going to be printed by Mak Press and will be expected to be launched before the end of the project in December.
The project is supporting eighteen staff with PhDs, two PhD students, Emma Bainomuisha and Gimono and eight Masters Degree students.
Prof. Joseph Ahikire who is the Principal Investigator of the Project as well Principal College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHUSS) stressed the significance of the symposium admitting that it intended to ensure researchers are on course and to have peer mentoring.
“… you see here we’ve got comments from our colleagues and that helps you to actually deepen the analysis because as hosts, you don’t want to call all people from all over the world, and then we are not ready to present papers.” She noted.
“That is something like a cleanup process, we academically mentor each other because we’ve been doing this research together. We have reading groups but this now was sort of preparing for the conference, and now we have confidence that people will present papers.” She added.
She stressed that they wanted to avoid accepting abstracts, then people reach the time of the conference and they don’t have anything, and they are stammering at the podium, ‘but now you’re very clear and sure that people will have substantial presentations which are groundbreaking.’
She revealed that the abstracts were multidisciplinary and they’ve gotten comments to improve their papers.
With the conversation centering around archiving, Prof. Ahikire believes that whatever was looted by the colonialists must be returned adding that, it’s not the responsibility of the victim to say what they should return but ‘the person who stole should just return everything.’
“No rationalization, now, do you know how much was stolen, or donated!, there was nothing donated because colonialism in itself was a violent crime.” Prof. Ahikire stressed.
She thanked the funder, Mellon Foundation citing that projects like these are not easily funded and is grateful that they have been part of this conversation because it elevates the level of humanities in that sense, and social sciences as well. She went on to heap praise for Makerere University Management that enabled them to choose the team to bring such unfamiliar things on the table, and for the support given to the college at all levels.
“There is support by Vice Chancellor (VC), we were supported by DVCs, Academic Registrars, even the the Deans, Heads of departments because these initiatives require that you are supported all round 360.” She noted.
The symposium climaxed with a Keynote on Stolen African Artifacts by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie who believes there should be decolonization of cultural Heritage with a Perspective on Artifact Return, Ownership, and Historical Context.
The keynote highlighted the complex issues surrounding the return of cultural artifacts, ownership, and historical context, with a focus on African cultural heritage.
It highlighted the psychological impact of colonialism on African identity and the need for inclusive negotiations regarding artifact return and emphasized the importance of redefining historical narratives to acknowledge African contributions and challenged the power dynamics in ownership dialogues.
It also torched into the international humanitarian law, historical processes of artifact acquisition, and economic power dynamics in global influence.