The current education systems and academic institutes have, to a large extent, propagated solely academic models of describing ‘nature’. But could and should we not speak of multiple ways of knowing and living with ‘nature’? In this MuseumTalk we shall discuss ‘nature’ from different perspectives, beyond the dominant academic models which too often neglect and marginalize indigenous and local knowledge systems.
Given the ongoing challenges we are facing nowadays, it might be time to braid academic knowledge with other knowledge systems, to (co-)create an inclusive story of Nature.
Featuring: Anywar Godwin, Njabulo Chipangura & Mercy Gloria Ashepet
This online event is organized by the AfrricaMuseum as part of the MuseumTalk series, please register for the event here and find out more about the in person workshop 'Decolonise Nature Weekend' here. The MuseumTalk will be recorded and the recording shall be made available to all registered participants thereafter.
About the speakers
Dr. Anywar Godwin is a researcher, academician, entrepreneur and author. He holds a PhD from the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy & Immunology in Leipzig, the University of Leipzig and Makerere University, Kampala. He currently lectures at the Department of Plant Sciences, Microbiology & Biotechnology at Makerere University, Uganda. His research interests are in the field of natural product development, pharmacognosy, ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology and indigenous knowledge.
Dr. Njabulo Chipangura holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He is currently working at the University of Manchester Museum as a curator of living Cultures and is responsible for the care of more than 20,000 objects from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. He is interested in looking at the empirical ways by which the museum practice in Africa can be decolonised through epistemic and aesthetic disobedience by undoing earlier ways of knowledge production in collection practices and exhibitions. Thus, he has carried out research that looks at how national museums in Africa continue to reproduce colonial forms of knowledge and at what it means to decolonise the museum practice.
The talk will be hosted by Mercy Gloria Ashepet. Mercy is currently conducting her PhD research at the AfricaMuseum, in which she explores the potential of 'citizen science' in Uganda. She is also co-facilitating the Decolonise Nature challenge of the Transdisciplinary Insights Honours Programme at KU Leuven.