In this conversation with Dr Maximilian Chami, we will explore the afterlives of German colonial violence in Tanzania, particularly the execution of two prominent chiefs from central Tanzania and the quest for return and reparation of their ancestral remains. Dr Chami will help us think through how this history of violence has influenced cultural negotiations and shaped the coping strategies of local communities in mourning their lost leaders. In addition, we will consider what Dr Chami’s research can tell us about the evolving relationship between museums, reparative justice and geo-politics.

Bearing Witness Series: Archives of Violence within and Beyond the Museum

Titled “Archives of Violence within and Beyond the Museum,“ this instalment, a continuation of Bearing Witness Series, interrogates how memory is constructed, who gets to remember, and what forms of witnessing are possible, especially when conventional modes of memorialisation fall short. Museums have long been sites of authority, tasked with preserving and presenting the past. However, as feminist, indigenous and decolonial scholars have argued, they are also sites of violence, shaped by colonial hierarchies, Western temporalities and rigid categories of identity. How, then, do we attend to what has been excluded, misrepresented or silenced?

Maximilian Felix Chami

Dr Maximilian Felix Chami is a cultural heritage specialist based in the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam. He holds a PhD in Heritage Studies from BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany. Dr Chami previously served as a senior research officer and secretary of the restitution committee at the National Museum of Tanzania (2021–2022), and as a Culture and World Heritage Officer at the UNESCO National Commission of the United Republic of Tanzania (2015–2021). In 2022, he was appointed as a Sensitive Provenance Research Fellow at the University of Göttingen, and in 2023, he joined Open Restitution Africa (ORA) as a researcher, contributing to efforts aimed at improving access to information concerning the restitution of African material culture and human remains. Dr Chami held a research fellowship with the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at the University of Göttingen, where he focused on colonial heritage and history. His research interests include cultural heritage management, colonial heritage, restitution, and the repatriation of human remains and ethnographic collections.

Sophia Sanan

Sophia Olivia Sanan (nee Rosochacki) holds a master’s degree in Sociology (from the Universities of Freiburg, Germany; Jawaharlal Nehru University, India and the University of Cape Town, 2014) and a PhD in Sociology through the University of Cape Town (2024). Her doctoral dissertation investigated politics of identity, loss and heritage through a study of the African art collection at the Iziko South African National Gallery. She has a professional background in African cultural policy development, education and art related research and has taught university students in South Africa, Uganda, the USA, Brazil and India. Since late 2020, she has worked with 12 museums in Africa, South America and South Asia, exploring ideas and practices of museology from Southern perspectives. She publishes on themes related to museology in the Global South; race and arts education; race, inequality and visual culture.

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