Both globally and locally, critical discourse around museums cannot be imagined without calls for “decolonization”. While no country in East-Central Europe (ECE) controlled an overseas colonial empire, the region was nonetheless fully entangled in the global colonial matrix of power. Objects in museums hailing from overseas bear witness to this past and present. In a novel attempt to understand East-Central Europe in its complex implication as both colonizer and colonized, Decolonial Museology Recentered (DMR) will focus on the development of a critical museology in Poland to address the lack of a decolonial discourse in the Polish museum landscape, in both theory and in practice.
DMR is a two-year international and inter-sectoral research project involving university researchers and museum practitioners in Canada and Poland. Principal Co-investigators Dr. Erica Lehrer (Concordia University, Montreal) and Dr. Joanna Wawrzyniak (University of Warsaw) will work in collaboration with Dr. Joanna Wasilewska (Director, Asia and Pacific Museum, Warsaw) to mentor student research assistants and a postdoctoral editorial fellow to survey the range of colonial histories and decolonial approaches to museum collections and curatorial practices in Poland and the broader ECE region. Throughout the research process particular emphasis will be given to the needs, challenges, and aspirations of representatives of key ethnic minorities that are socially marginalized in Poland today.
During the two-year research process, a series of theoretical and practical tools will help to develop an academic, museum sector, and public conversation around the topic of decoloniality in Poland’s museums. A peer-reviewed volume will emerge through an editorial workshop with international scholars and practitioners, representing a groundbreaking scholarly research project to survey the field of decolonial museology in the East-Central European context. A policy recommendations document will be also drafted based on the insights of a Poland-based minority community consultation group, and will be debated and refined in a subsequent two-day workshop with culture-sector leaders. Thanks to our cross-sectoral team, the project’s outcomes will be of interest and accessible to scholars and heritage practitioners alike
Decolonial Museology Recentered (DMR) is funded by an Insight Development Grant from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and builds on outcomes of the ECHOES project, funded by a Horizon 2020 European Commission grant co-led by the University of Warsaw (2018-2021). The DMR project is also supported by the University of Warsaw and the Asia and Pacific Museum
