the conference // March 30-31 2023
The international conference aimed to discuss new biographic approaches to research and storytelling – as a part of decolonial practice for ethnographic museums.
Want to re-read our Call for Papers? You can find it here.
There is now also a small but very fine collection of papers, developed from presentations of the conference. Find the Boas Papers series we are now part of here, our edition as a PDF here.
More about the publication, the authors, their topics, and how it was made possible here.
Haeming, Anne (ed.) 2025: Imperial Lives. Biographic Approaches as Decolonial Practice. boasblogs papers 5. Bonn, Bremen, Cologne, Siegen: boasblogs. [open access]
Print-ISSN: 2698-6086
Online-ISSN: 2698-6094
DOI: 10.18716/bbp/5
the project //
The conference is a result of the provenance research project “Wilhelm Joest and the Intimacies of Colonial Collecting”:
the German ethnographer (1852-1897) was the founding collector of the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum in Cologne.
Project funding:
Museumsgesellschaft RJM e.V., from the bequest of the late L. Th. v. Rautenstrauch (2019-2020)
Fritz Thyssen Stiftung (2020-2023)
Conference funding:
Fritz Thyssen Stiftung (2023)
Museumsgesellschaft RJM e.V. (2023)
the books //
The project has resulted in two books that may serve as expressions of the conference’s “researching” and “storytelling” approach: a biography and a critically commented edition of six of Joest’s texts.
Anne Haeming:
“Der gesammelte Joest. Biografie eines Ethnologen”
(Matthes & Seitz, 05/2023)
Carl Deußen, Anne Haeming (eds.):
“Von Santa Cruz nach Indien durch die Ethnologie. Fragmente des Forschungsreisenden Wilhelm Joest”
(Matthes & Seitz, 05/2023)