How to Engage with / Repatriate ‘Artefacts’–Ancestors?

As part of the project How to Engage with / Repatriate ‘Artefacts’–Ancestors? A Multidisciplinary Dialogue on Collections of Ancestral Remains in German and French Museums, coordinated by inherit fellow Damiana Oțoiu, and funded by the Franco-German Provenance Research Fund, a research workshop took place in Berlin from 5-13 June 2026.

The workshop was held at inherit, the Humboldt Forum, and SAVVY Contemporary and brought together museum professionals and researchers, as well as legal experts and artists from South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Namibia, France, Romania, and Germany. The programme included expert presentations from various fields, visits to multiple Berlin institutions, and most of all, sustained collective reflection.

The outstanding group of speakers included inherit director Sharon Macdonald, team members Irene Hilden and Habiba I. (inherit), Katharina Ribbe (German Federal Foreign Office Auswärtiges Amt (Federal Foreign Office) Germany), Sarah Fründt (German Lost Art Foundation Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste), María Leonor Pérez Ramírez and Kimberly Tanzius (German Contact Point for Cultural Property and Human Remains from Colonial Contexts), Lynhan Balatbat-Helbock and Billy Fowo (SAVVY Contemporary), Anna Szoeke, Ilja Labischinski, and Kristin Weber-Sinn (Humboldt Forum, Yann Le Gall (Technische Universität Berlin), Priya Basil (inherit. heritage in transformation fellow), Isabelle Reimann (Institut für Anatomie der Universität Leipzig), and Laura Horelli (Independent artist).

It provided a space for exchange across disciplines, focusing on the history of physical anthropology collections held in Berlin museums, with particular attention to ancestral remains originating from territories corresponding to present-day Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, and Namibia.

Please find the full workshop program here.

The workshop was preceded by two online training sessions held on 27 and 28 May 2026 (in English and French), both led by Yann Le Gall from Technische Universität Berlin. Entitled Doing Provenance Research in Germany: Tools, Databases, and Access, the sessions introduced participants to key resources, databases, and methodologies for provenance research in Germany. The programme will be followed in July 2026 by a similar workshop, entitled Doing Provenance Research in France: Tools, Databases, and Access, to be led by Simon Jean-Nebbache, provenance researcher at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris