Rethinking colonial heritage with CONCILIARE

How to transform colonial heritages in our streets, museums or collective imaginations - The European CONCILIARE project analyzes postcolonial controversies and experiments, with citizens, with new ways of thinking about and evolving these heritages.

Since March 2024, CONCILIARE has been studying the transformations of colonial cultural heritages in Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Croatia and Finland. This HORIZON-EUROPE project studies various fields: school textbooks, public spaces, museums and consumer products.

At ULB, Laurent Licata (Faculty of Psychology, Educational Sciences and Logopedics) is the supervisor of an interdisciplinary team: Maria Babinska , social psychologist, and Yasmina Zian , historian. Together with Chantal Kesteloot and Alana Castro (CEGESOMA), the team is working on how postcolonial controversies have transformed colonial heritage such as street names, statues, the Tervuren Museum (Africa Museum), Father Fouettard...

The aim of this research is to establish the history of these controversies, and to identify the psychological mechanisms at play within social groups when the colonial narrative is challenged or even denounced. The results of this research will be used to create tools that will enable different groups to participate in the transformation of colonial heritages. These tools will be tested through small-scale pilot projects.

For example, the pilot project on public space involves co-creating an artistic and visual installation inspired by discussions between activists, researchers, artists and local authorities. This work will then be shown in the public space, as well as to schoolchildren, to facilitate joint reflection on the modifications to be made to the colonial statues.

If you’d like to find out more, or take part in the public space pilot project, you can meet the team at the ULB anti-racism festival on March 20.

To find out more, visit the conciliare.eu project website, or send your questions to yasmina.zian@ulb.be