Siona O’Connell is a Professor at the University of Pretoria, a scholar and social justice activist whose research spans heritage, slavery, land dispossession, memory, and decoloniality in South Africa. She is also a documentary filmmaker. She is currently Principal Investigator on Unsilencing as Restitution (UnRest) (NWO/NWA, 2026–2030), Co-Investigator on COLUMN: Colonial Legacies of Universities (Horizon Europe, 2025–2029), a Co-Investigator of the NWO-funded Slavery Past Present consortium (2026–2030) – the only scholar from an African university in the group – and South African Coordinating Partner for the KITLV-led Dutch Slavery Pasts and Their Afterlives programme (2026–2027).