The title of the Re:membering Research Section (RS) emphasises the entangled processes of world-making that are involved in institutional and non-institutional forms of remembering in Africa and its diasporas (Sansone, 2023). Re:membering hints at lines of inquiry: of bringing together fragments, of retrieving lost or silenced memories, and of bringing practices of remembering into processes of memory-making. Therefore, as it implies and exemplifies, methodological and theoretical innovations emerging from African knowledge systems have applicability across contexts – in this case, wherever memory is a key instrument of power and a vehicle for the transmission and dissemination of knowledge. Thus, RS Re:membering, will envision the nuanced and complex ways of world-making in which memory operates, on levels (im)material, interconnected, transtemporal, affective and spiritual, creating shared meanings for the pasts, presents, and futures of groups and societies. One of the main objectives in this RS will centre around using experimental methodologies drawing on African indigenous knowledge systems, such as divination and dreaming. Research will also consistently consider how factors such as sex, gender, race, geography, economic mobility and inequalities intersect.

This RS will engage with the rising discussion around Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) and more precisely the concepts of Living Heritage and heritage-making, which, per UNESCO World Heritage guidelines, imply archivisation and musealisation of a host of local practices, critically examining the nature of archival practices when what is being archived lies in-between the tangible and the intangible. This area of inquiry holds great potential for synergistic over laps with RS Digitalities, in terms of the interplay between digital-archival politics and other epistemological, cultural and political questions.