29 October 2025
Conference | October 29, 2025 | 10.00 - 16.00 | Gerbrandszaal, Wereldmuseum Leiden
The Research Center for Material Culture is hosting the first day of the conference Decolonizing Archaeological Epistemologies, organized by Dr. Pansee Atta. How can we propose more expansive, democratic, and liberatory practices and approaches to the past and material culture? What can counter-colonial approaches, in rethinking the status of the historical object in the public eye, be?
About the conference
The opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum has been hailed as a major museological achievement, a cutting-edge and high-tech advancement with the potential to shift global discourses on the repatriation of Pharaonic antiquities. And yet, little emphasis has been placed on how such discourses entrench existing museological norms, situating categories of “antiquity”, “artifact”, “treasure”, and “discovery” through extractive, colonial frameworks.
Decolonizing Archaeological Epistemologies is a conference critically examining archaeological histories and practices, proposing instead more expansive, democratic, and liberatory approaches to the past and material culture, challenging extant museological, academic, economic, and legal systems governing the ways that material culture is collected, studied, and traded. With implications spanning beyond Egyptology to archaeology, museology, and historical disciplines more broadly, this conference proposes a counter-colonial approach that rethinks the status of the historical object in the public eye.
Program
| 9.00 - 10.00 | Registration |
| 10.30 - 11.30 | Panel 1: Resisting archeological extractivism; new approaches to field-based research Chair: Miriam Müller |
| 11.45 - 12.45 | Panel 2: Community-based archeology in theory and practice Chair: Pansee Abou ElAtta |
| 12.45 - 13:45 | Lunch Break |
| 13:45 - 14:45 | Panel 3: Counter-colonial museum exhibition strategies Chair: Magati Clinton |
| 15.00 - 16.00 | Panel 4: Beyond the "thing itself"; digital and ephemeral approaches to archeological collections Chair: Anil Sarkar |
30 October
The second day of the conference on Thursday 30 October 2025, takes place at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (RMO) in Leiden. Please find the schedule of the second day here: https://www.decolonizingarchaeology.com/conference-schedule/
The conference Decolonizing Archaeological Epistemologies is supported by:
