Western approaches to studying African materials have had a colonial bias. A curator considers what it means to think of the collection as needing to exist in relation to communities.
Kenya’s first president Jomo Kenyatta waves at a crowd.
Harry Benson/Getty Images
Jomo Kenyatta and his successor Daniel arap Moi set the tone for ethnic and authoritarian politics which Kenya has wrestled to free itself from in recent decades.
Pakistani Christians praying at a church.
AP Photo/Fareed Khan
Consigned to jobs in sanitation and other hazardous fields, Christians, the largest religious minority group in Pakistan, face a difficult time in the country.
DRC Prime Minister Jean-Michel Lukonde (L) at Belgium’s AfricaMuseum in 2022.
Jasper Jacobs via Getty Images
The government and some producers are pushing to industrialize the sugar cane-based spirit to boost its popularity around the world, while small farmers fear losing their livelihoods.
Genève, exposition Nationale, le “Village Noir” dans le parc de Plaisance
Antoine Elie Chevalley, photographe
Letizia Gaja Pinoja, Graduate Institute – Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement (IHEID)
On paper, the lush and wealthy city of Geneva is one of the capitals of human rights. Yet, one historian’s work points to a darker history few one want to see.
Ozempic, a semaglutide drug being used for weight loss, could impact how society sees fat people.
(macrovector/Freepik)
Vinita Srivastava, The Conversation; Boké Saisi, The Conversation, and Kikachi Memeh, The Conversation
As the use of Ozempic, a drug for diabetes, slams into the mainstream as a weight-loss method, will the drug’s use impact our concept of fatness? And how does fatness intersect with race and class?
Digitizing plants preserved in the herbarium at La Sapienza University in Rome.
Mimmo Frassineti/AGF/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The colonial era profoundly shaped natural history museums and collections. Herbaria, which are scientists’ main source of plant specimens from around the world, are no exception.
By the end of the 19th century, railways were being used by millions across India.
Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
Ritika Prasad, University of North Carolina – Charlotte
A deadly crash in India that claimed the lives of around 300 people has refocused international attention on the importance of railways in the country.
Peter Enahoro, Nigerian journalist, columnist and author, died on 24 April 2023.
The late South African mining tycoon, Harry Oppenheimer.
Harry Frederick Oppenheimer in his Johannesburg office. (Photo by William Campbell/Sygma via Getty Images
Regarding himself heir to Cecil Rhodes, Oppenheimer deplored the threat to civilisation represented by ‘primitive tribesmen’.
Signwriters rush to replace colonial street names with news ones in April 1964, a few months after Kenya’s independence on December 12, 1963.
AFP via Getty Images
Stan Grant’s new book, The Queen is Dead, is revealing in terms of his decision to step down from public life. ‘I have been reminded what it is to come from the other side of history,’ he writes.
The practice of gardening is deeply tied to colonialism. Here a woman pushes a cart of flowers at her garden centre in Toronto, May 4, 2020.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn
Activists view their moral case for the return of the diamonds as unanswerable, but it runs up against many complications.
Hamilton Dhlamini in The Head & The Load, a production in which composer Philip Miller reworks the British national anthem.
Stella Olivier/The Head & The Load
Philip Miller and Amit Chaudhuri have reworked national anthems to reflect the impact of history on official music.
King Charles and Queen Camilla stand on the balcony of Buckingham Palace after their coronation in London on May 6, 2023.
(Leon Neal/Pool Photo via AP)
Canadians should learn the lessons of the U.S. and the U.K. to avoid idealizing a republic with a powerful president and at the same time acknowledge that a constitutional monarchy is no alternative.
Research Fellow at the University of the Free State, South Africa and Assistant Professor in the History of International Relations, Utrecht University
Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University