The implicated researcher: Shifting positionalities in collaborative research and restitution projects
On 2 December 2025, Jun-Prof. Dr. Julia Binter will give a talk titled “The implicated researcher: Shifting positionalities in collaborative research and restitution projects.”
Taking the collaborative research, exhibition and restitution project ‘Confronting Colonial Pasts, Envisioning Creative Futures’ on the collections from Namibia at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin as a starting point, I will discuss my shifting positionalities within this highly charged transcultural and transcontinental process: from the provenance research and co-curation of an exhibition in Berlin to the return of cultural belongings and their subsequent re-connection with scholars, artists and communities in Namibia. Tying in with Michael Rothberg’s concept of ‘the implicated subject’, I interrogate the dynamic socio-political contexts of Germany and Namibia, their contentious historically grown relationship, and the current role of ethnographic museums in
mediating practices and discourses of contested heritage that shaped my own implicatedness. I argue that my implicatedness was shaped as much by the institution in which I worked as by a position negotiated—both implicitly and explicitly—with various differently situated research partners.
The lecture is part of the Institute Colloquium of the Department of Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.
Time: 18:15–19:45
Venue: Philosophicum I, Jakob-Welder-Weg 18, 55128 Mainz – Room P4
Languages: German and English
Format: In person
Registration: Not required
All are welcome to attend.