Decolonizing Archaeological Epistemologies

The opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum has been hailed as a major museological achievement, a cutting-edge and high-tech advancement with the potential to shift global discourses on the repatriation of Pharaonic antiquities. And yet, little emphasis has been placed on how such discourses entrench existing museological norms, situating categories of “antiquity”, “artifact”, “treasure”, and “discovery” through extractive, colonial frameworks.

Decolonizing Archaeological Epistemologies is a conference critically examining archaeological histories and practices, proposing instead more expansive, democratic, and liberatory approaches to the past and material culture, challenging extant museological, academic, economic, and legal systems governing the ways that material culture is collected, studied, and traded. With implications spanning beyond Egyptology to archaeology, museology, and historical disciplines more broadly, this conference proposes a counter-colonial approach that rethinks the status of the historical object in the public eye.

Register for in-person or virtual attendance on the conference website. Updates and final conference schedule are published there.

Preliminary programme

Sessions include:

• Panel 1 – Beyond “treasure”; challenging artifactual ontologies and epistemologies
• Panel 2 – Counter-colonial museum exhibition strategies
• Panel 3 – Resisting archaeological extractivism; new approaches to field-based research
• Panel 4 – Community-based archaeology in theory and practice
• Panel 5 – Beyond the “thing itself”; digital and ephemeral approaches to archaeological collections
• Panel 6 – Who gets the past? New discourses in restitution, return, and repair

Keynote by Dr Monica Hanna (Arab Academy for Science Technology and Maritime Transport) on Thursday, October 30, 19.30 hrs at RMO. Registration for in-person attendance via the RMO website.

Practical information

Conference in Leiden, the Netherlands, October 29-30, 2025.

• October 29, presentations: Research Center for Material Culture (RCMC; next to Wereldmuseum Leiden) – Gerbrandszaal
• October 30, presentations: Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (RMO) – Nehalenniazaal
• October 30, keynote: Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (RMO) – Temple Hall

For more information: contact the organiser, Pansee Abou ElAtta.