The Histories We Tell: Lessons in Public and Participatory History from Africa

Public History and Community Archiving have been researched, practiced, and theorized for a long time in different contexts and by a wide variety of cultures and groups. For the past six years, the project Public History as the New Citizen Science of the Past (PHACS) has been experimenting and putting into practice several initiatives, projects, and events, which look at how public history practices in Luxembourg and within the European context can be put in discussion with other practices around the world. This has led to new collaborations beyond Europe, namely in Egypt, Kenya, Lebanon, Martinique and Qatar.

To mark the closing of PHACS and to think collectively about potential collaborative futures, the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH), in collaboration with African Digital Heritage (ADH), is convening partners, scholars, archivists, artists, journalists, and cultural practitioners from across Africa and the Afro-diaspora to explore how histories are made visible, preserved, and carried forward in Africa and from an African knowledge production lens.

What does it mean to make history public, participatory, and grounded in the communities to whom it belongs? The Histories We Tell: Lessons in Public and Participatory History from Africa is a one-day workshop designed to foster and continue conversations on the ethics and politics of co-production in local, transnational, and global contexts. From activist archiving and visual satire to community archives and digital preservation, the program considers how history is shaped collectively, how communities remain central to the histories that concern them, and how the historical record can speak meaningfully to the present. For more information, send your email to thomas.cauvin@uni.lu