CfP: Transnational Conversations: Heritage, Memory, Climate, and Reparatory Justice in the Caribbean, Europe, and Beyond
We are pleased to invite submissions for a conference exploring how heritage and memory practices, alongside the legacies of climate coloniality, shape contemporary understandings and mobilisations of reparations. This event will examine how historical and political dynamics influence reparative justice narratives in the Caribbean and their evolving connections with Europe.
Conference 29-30 October 2025 at Leiden University
Abstract submission deadline: 21 July 2025 (extended)
Keynote by Professor Ana Lucia Araujo, Howard University, USA
There is an urgent need for dialogue and discussions about reparatory justice with regard to memory and heritage in transnational geographies. Across the insular Caribbean, Europe and beyond, individuals, communities, and political institutions are confronting pressing questions of colonial slavery and its afterlives. Among the questions are the discourses of colonial violence and its legacies, forcing politics to (re)think historical accountability. Environmental and climate issues, along with the reconfiguration of heritage practices and memory, remain integral to global calls for reparatory justice that are echoing worldwide. However, too often we neglect a transnational perspective that opens new avenues to fully comprehend how contemporary politics, social movements, and academic discourses on reparations intersect with critical approaches to the colonial past and colonialism. About two decades ago, France recognized slavery as a crime against humanity, and European countries such as the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Spain have also acknowledged their colonial legacies. In the ensuing years, reparations discourses and movements have intensified, particularly within the CARICOM – Caribbean Community. The proposed conference ‘Transnational Conversations’, will bring together multiple disciplines to provide a solid basis for new knowledge that will enhance and deepen discussions on reparations in the Caribbean as well as the region’s connection to Europe and beyond. Engaging with reparation debates in the Caribbean moves beyond Eurocentric notions of repair, which are all too dominant, particularly in Europe. Grassroots movements not only demonstrate that broader notions of repair are needed but also carry inherent insights about what these notions entail.
Climate and environmental issues inform us about colonial scars imprinted on postcolonial geographies evidenced by eroded and deforested lands, impacting the current lived experiences of communities, while climate coloniality continues to shape ecological futures. Furthermore, understanding how heritage and memory practices influence contemporary mobilisations of reparations is a ongoing process. This conference offers a platform for discussion, networking, and knowledge production through which we question the new modes of engagement that scholars, activists, grassroots, and heritage practitioners are developing, thus linking reparatory justice to environmental and heritage justice. Transnational Conversations will offer avenues for groundbreaking discussions underpinning diverse fields, including heritage and memory studies, history, environmental humanities, political science, law and policy studies. The main questions addressed are: how do heritage and memory practices, and climate coloniality shape contemporary understandings and mobilisations of reparations?; and how do historical and political dynamics influence the reparations narratives in the Caribbean and their connections with Europe?
Transnational Conversations will tackle the challenges posed and seize opportunities to advance scientific debates and societal discussions on issues that recognise colonial slavery and its afterlives while critically advocating for global solidarity and a common future. The scientific and societal debate will be launched by a plenary session during which the book Slavery & the Dutch State: Dutch Colonial Slavery and Its Afterlives will be presented. While discussions on colonial slavery and its afterlives have become increasingly relevant in academia, the relationship of this topic to reparations, memory, environmental challenges, and heritage must still be critically articulated. A broadened discussion on the notion of redress by scholars from the Caribbean, Europe, and beyond will widen our understanding of justice for historical wrongs. In the context of the NWO-Veni project ‘Places To Not Forget’, and the book project ‘Slavery & the Dutch State: Dutch Colonial Slavery and Its Afterlives’, this two-day conference will comprise keynote lectures, research and book presentations, and panel discussions.
Keynote Speaker
Professor Ana Lucia Araujo, Howard University, USA
Ana Lucia Araujo is a Professor at the Department of History, Howard University, USA and 2025 Heinz-Heinen Senior Fellow. She specializes in the history and memory of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade and is particularly interested in the visual and material culture of slavery, and she is the author or editor of over fifteen books. Her recent books include Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade: A Transnational and Comparative History (second edition 2023) and The Gift: How Objects of Prestige Shaped the Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonialism (2024). Her latest book is Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery and was published with the University of Chicago Press in 2024. Her work has been recently supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ), the Getty Research Institute, the American Philosophical Society. In 2025, she was awarded a John Solomon Guggenheim Fellowship. She is a member of the International Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Routes of Enslaved Peoples Project and among others she is the member of the editorial boards of the journal Slavery and Abolition and African Economic History.
Submission guidelines
We invite contributions that speak to the following key themes related to reparatory justice, but are not excusive to:
- Heritage practices and discourses
- Climate coloniality and reparations
- Ecological and environmental memories
- Politics of reparatory justice
- Museums and archives in reparative justice
- Memory, commemoration, and public awareness
The in-person conference will be conducted in English. We also welcome creative outputs such as 15-minute video documentaries and image compilations related to the conference themes.
Abstract submission
Individual paper proposals should include:
- Title
- Abstract not more than 200 words
- Short biography (150 words max) including affiliations
Submissions can be sent to: j.s.jean@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Key dates
Submission deadline: 21 July 2025 (extended)
Notification: 30 July 2025
Dates of the conference: 29–30 October 2025
Scientific Committee
- Joseph Sony Jean (NWO-Veni Fellow, Institute for History, Leiden University, Affiliated Researcher at KITLV)
- Esther Captain (Senior Researcher, KITLV)
- Nicole L. Immler (Professor of Historical Memory and Transformative Justice, University of Humanities Studies)
- Daphina Misiedjan (Assistant Professor in Human Rights and the Environment, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University)
- Karwan Fatah-Black (Assistant Professor in Dutch Colonial History, Leiden University, Senior Researcher at KITLV)
- Felix Stein (Senior Researcher, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam)
