Global Restitution

Conference

Global Restitution & Reparative Efforts in Museums
A Hybrid International Interdisciplinary Conference

October 29-30, 2026
Online & In-person 
University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, USA

The Center for Global and International Studies, the Kansas African Studies Center, the Spencer Museum of Art, and Museum Studies at the University of Kansas invite proposals for a two-day hybrid interdisciplinary conference on global restitution and reparative efforts in museums. This conference will bring together scholars, curators, museum professionals, artists, legal scholars, community leaders, and graduate students to explore the various forms of reparative work occurring within museums to address the complicated life histories of objects in their care, including through repatriation, collaboration, and partnership. 

Conference focus 

Restitution has emerged as a major global question that lies at the intersection of museums, archives, law, history, anthropology, Indigenous sovereignty, cultural memory, race and ethnicity, colonialism, and international politics. In recent years, the colonialist legacies of western museums has led institutions across the U.S. and Europe to reconsider their missions as it relates to the stewardship, collection and display of material culture, particularly objects held outside of their country of origin. This conference seeks to illuminate future pathways forward for museums and source communities by highlighting new and varied approaches to collaboration and partnership, as well as the diversity of outcomes produced by these efforts. Through critical conversations across disciplines and geographies, sessions will consider the opportunities and challenges presented by reparative efforts inside and outside of museums, including  repatriation (or physical transfer), propatriation, reciprocal loans/acquisitions, long term stewardship agreements, and co-curated exhibitions, dialogues fostered by and through collaborations with contemporary artists, as well as foregrounding ethical and transparent frameworks to shape these and other practices.   

This conference seeks to foster critical and comparative conversations about the role of restitution within contemporary museology, particularly as it exists on an international level. It aims to explore the legal, cultural, diplomatic, financial, and historical factors that contribute to and prohibit progress, while providing a forum to discuss strategies that have shown promise for advancing reparative efforts and strengthening museums as shared spaces of practice.   

Proposals are welcome from a wide range of disciplines and fields, including (but not limited to) Museum Studies, Indigenous Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, Race and Ethnic Studies, Latin American Studies, Art History, Anthropology, History, Legal Studies, American Studies, Global and International Studies, Religious Studies, Public Humanities, Memory Studies, Archaeology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Geology, Information and Library Science, and Heritage Studies. 

Possible themes
Topics may include, but are not limited to: 

  • International law, policy, and diplomacy in restitution cases 
  • Cultural heritage, sovereignty, and Indigenous rights within nation states 
  • Restitution and contested claims of cultural heritage  
  • International repatriation and rematriation of human remains, sacred objects, and cultural patrimony 
  • Museum collecting practices: ethics, provenance research, and accountability 
  • Role, value, and responsibilities of encyclopedic museums in the 21st century 
  • Competing ontologies: natural history collections and cultural restitution 
  • Archives, libraries, and the restitution of documentary heritage 
  • Repair through propatriation and reciprocity 
  • Shared stewardship and long-term loans as restitution  
  • Digital platforms as restitution 
  • Museums, source communities, and restitution through partnership and collaboration 
  • Exhibitions and museum programming as methods of restitution 
  • Curatorial democratization as restitution 
  • Restitution through Knowledge Sharing: Integrating museology with oral histories and Indigenous epistemologies 
  • Memory, trauma, and the politics of repair 
  • Artistic, curatorial, and activist responses to restitution debates 
  • Pedagogies of restitution in museums, universities, and public institutions 
  • Decolonization theory as hegemonic practice: when contemporary western museum ethics are imposed cross-culturally
Submission
Registration (free)