Cultural Restitution in the Transitional Justice Context: A Discussion of African and Asian Cases

Dr Phyllis Ferguson is a Research Associate at the African Studies Centre of the University of Oxford and a long-standing member of OTJR.

She will speak about the process of Transitional Justice in the violation of social and cultural rights in Timor-Leste. The domestic context of Timorese social status, family, and gender norms during the Indonesian occupation and the losses experienced became the post-conflict context for truth-telling. The process of reconciliation and justice in Timor-Leste, including restitution, is a long and complex challenge.

Dan Hicks is Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at the University of Oxford and Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum. His next book The Brutish Museums: the Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution will be published by Pluto in August 2020.

Prof Hicks will be talking about current questions in African cultural restitution, and introducing his new DFG-AHRC project The Restitution of Knowledge, which he leads alongside Prof Bénédicte Savoy from the Technische Universtiät in Berlin.