Preliminary program
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Please note that changes to the program will be made in the coming days, specifically regarding the speakers for the roundtable discussions.
Day 1
Wednesday 29 October, 2025
9:00 - 9:45 Walk in, coffee, and tea
9:45 - 10:00 Welcome
Joseph Sony Jean (Leiden University & Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) and Esther Captain (Utrecht University & Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), The Netherlands)
10:00 - 11:00 Keynote Lecture
Ana Lucia Araujo (Howard University, USA)
Chair : Emmanuel Adu-Ampong (Wageningen University)
11:00 - 12:15 The Politics of reparations (Part I)
René Koekkoek (Utrecht University)
Historicizing the Politics of Reparatory Justice
Kenan Van de Mieroop-Al Bahrani (Leiden University)
Retrospective politics or racial capitalism? A response to some common criticisms of reparations proposals.
Lina Le Pelley (University of Amsterdam)
Fractured memory and diverging “truths”: Reconciliation and reparations for German colonialism amidst continued inequality in postcolonial Namibia
Shelene Gomes (University of the West Indies, Saint-Augustine Campus, Trinidad)
Colonialism in the British West Indies and Postcolonial Reparative Justice for All
Chair: Sara Polak (Leiden University)
12:15 - 13:15 Lunch
13:15 - 14:30 The Politics of reparations (Part II)
Joseph Sony Jean (Leiden University & Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) & Jhon Picard Byron (Université d’ Etat d’ Haiti)
Haiti, a place to not Forget: The political and memorial dynamics of reparations and restitution
Georges Eddy Lucien (University of Haiti & University of Ottawa)
The Restitution of the 1825 Indemnity: Between the Erasure of a Subversive Memory and the Construction of a Neocolonial Order
Phoebe Hargrave (Vrije Universiteit van Amsterdam)
Lost and Found in Translation: Illegal Intercountry Adoptions and the Belgian Métis Civil Case
Francio Guadeloupe (University of Amsterdam & Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV)
Uncommoning reparations
Chair: Felix Stein (University of Amsterdam)
14:30 - 16:00 Heritage practices and discourses
Kenneth Cuvalay (St. Eustatius Afrikan Burial Ground Alliance, St. Eustatius)
Lack of cultural heritage legislation and ethical guidelines for archaeological practices on St. Eustatius and reparative justice
John Njenga Karugia (Institute for Asian and African Studies at the Humboldt University, Germany)
Memory Ethics of Slavery in Transnational Memory Spaces
Marlous van den Akker
Good culture, bad culture’ – The legacy of colonialism’s demonization of black cultural practices, and the question of how to come to terms with it
Khoren H. Grigoryan (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences, Armenia)
Heritage as autonomy: Musa dagh memory in Anjar and the politics of community sovereignty
Cristiano Berti (Academy of Art of Macerata, Italy)
Discreet Monument
Chair: Karwan Fatah-Black
16:00 - 17:00 Roundtable discussion
Chair: TBC
Day 2
Thursday 30 October, 2025
9h00 – 9h30 : Walk in, coffee, and tea
9:30 - 10:30. Discussion around the book Slavery & the Dutch State : Dutch Colonial Slavery and Its Afterlives edited by Rose Mary Allen, Esther Captain, Matthias Van Rossum, and Urwin Vyent.
Discussion with :
Matthias Van Rossum (Institute of Social History in Amsterdam & Radboud University in Nijmegen)
Esther Captain (Utrecht University & KITLV)
Stanley Louis (CY Cergy-Paris Université, France)
(To be completed)
10:30 - 12:00 Climate coloniality and reparative justice
Vanessa L. Deane (New York University, USA)
Institutional Arrangements, Multi-level Governance, and Climate Justice Considerations for Non-Sovereign Overseas Territories of the European Union
Lucia Beck (CdvhK Werkorganisatie Herdenkingscomité Slavernijverleden)
Heritage, Remembrance and Continuities: Confronting slavery’s afterlives and shaping a hopeful future in the Dutch Caribbean – an audiovisual creation
Hosna J. Shewly (University of Amsterdam)
The Forest as Archive: Border Militarisation, Extractive Aesthetics, and Indigenous Counter-Heritage in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh
Daphina Misiedjan (International Institute of Social Studies / Erasmus University Rotterdam)
‘We Have Always Known’: Maroon Technologies and Climate Justice as Continuity,
Kai Tjong-Ayong (University of Amsterdam)
Chinese Indenture and the Plantation Ecology in Suriname
Chair : David Kloos (KITLV)
12:00 - 13:00 Lunch
13:00 - 14:00 Ecological and environmental memories
Oluwasola Festus OBISESAN (The University of Edinburgh, Scotland)
Re-reading Power and Memory: The Ife-Osugbo Forests in the era of Mining and Colonial Sculptural Economies
Fidel Rodríguez Velásquez (Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Brazil) & Oliver Antczak (University of Cambridge, UK)
Reeling in the Years: Millenary Fishing Heritage of the Southern Caribbean
Maarten van der Bent (NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, The Netherlands)
Reparatory justice for Maawina: conceptualizing a river as a historical person
Chair: Sandra Milena Rios Oyola (University College Roosevelt)
14:00 - 14:15 Coffee break
14:15 - 15:30 Memory, commemoration, and public awareness
Neha Singh (Jaipuria Institute of Management, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India) & Preeti Jhajharia (Manipal University Jaipur, India)
The Museum as Contact Zone: Bhojpuri Diasporic Memory and Cultural Resilience
Rebecca Hussey (Independent Researcher)
The Jamaica Film Unit and the Question of Reparatory Justice in the Context of Audiovisual Archives
Mary Uhunoma Isibor (University of Benin, Benin)
Reclaiming Cultural Heritage: Exploring Reparations and Heritage Practices through the Lens of Benin Arts
Natalie N. Clue (City Saint-Georges University, UK)
Consumption Construction and the Windrush Generations: Diasporic Celebration as Resistance and Reclamation
Chair: Rosemarijn Hofte (University of Amsterdam & KITLV)
15:30-15:40 Coffee break
15:40 - 17:00 Roundtable discussion
Chair: Karwan Fatah-Black & Esther Captain
17:00 - 17:10 Wrap up and prospects of Transnational Conversation conference
Joseph Sony Jean
17:15 Borrel
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