New explorations into South Sudanese museum collections in Europe

The new state of South Sudan is best known for its deeply troubled history; from enslavement and colonisation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to the prolonged civil wars that led both to its independence in 2011 and to continued post-independence conflicts. This history of violence and victimhood poses both analytical and practical challenges to scholars and nation-builders alike: how can we better understand the interactions and strategies pursued by people even in violent contexts? How can we study and celebrate the creativity, resilience and reciprocities that also run through South Sudanese history? How can we gain a richer picture of the region's past, one that reaches beyond deterministic narratives of conflict and ethnic division?

One resource for doing this lies unexploited in our midst. European museums house an estimated 20,000 objects, originally acquired by European travellers, traders, missionaries and officials in the Southern Sudanese region in the nineteenth or early twentieth century. These items range from household objects, jewellery, weaponry and musical instruments to large, visually striking figurative statues. They are now housed in locations as diverse as St Petersburg, Rome and Kent. Many of the collections have rich supporting documentation - including accounts of expeditions, diaries, photographs and correspondence concerning acquisitions by museums. Yet they have not yet been the subject of extensive comparative enquiry.

'New explorations into South Sudanese museum collections in Europe' is an international research network investigating this huge but largely untapped resource for advancing understandings of South Sudan's history, global connections and creative arts. Not only do these collections provide new sources on the region's past, they also expose complex narratives of interaction, in both its violent and more peaceful aspects. Exploring material connections and reciprocities will make new intellectual advances on the history of South Sudan possible and allow us to rethink this history with potential for significant intellectual and social impacts.

The network brings together academics from different disciplines with museum practitioners and heritage stakeholders to develop a research agenda on South Sudanese museum collections across Europe. It is the first of its kind to connect these dispersed collections with South Sudanese communities, addressing not only the collections' academic significance, but also their potential contribution to developing more inclusive understandings of South Sudanese identity. These objects can reveal histories of economic and cultural exchange within the region that has become South Sudan. Through their acquisition, export and display in Europe, they also embody the often violent and extractive incorporation of this region into imperial and transnational economies. They offer the potential for deeper and more nuanced understandings of how people in the Upper Nile region negotiated new trading opportunities as well as the coercive predation through which these objects were acquired.

Through three workshops with international participants, the network will make tangible steps towards a major programme of research on the collections, involving institutions in both Europe and South Sudan. It will serve as a unique international hub for museums with significant South Sudanese collections, facilitating new comparative perspectives on as yet disconnected collections and histories. A key priority is to involve South Sudanese in this research process, while providing an important opportunity for current curators and researchers to reflect on the past and present display of these collections, their reception by European audiences and the narratives they project. The initial results will be published in a special journal issue aimed at multidisciplinary audiences and online to reach the widest possible academic and non-academic audiences.

This network will be the first of its kind to comparatively examine South Sudanese museum collections held across Europe in collaboration with South Sudanese stakeholders. It will have key impacts beyond the academy on a) museum practice in Europe and b) cultural development in South Sudan. These impacts will be developed through engagement and collaboration between different sectors:

- The public sector in both Europe and South Sudan: the network will influence museum practice on South Sudanese collections. Institutions will learn more about the objects in their care and gain opportunities to establish links across Europe and with South Sudan. The network will partner and work closely with the Pitt Rivers Museum as one route to the co-production of knowledge with this sector. Impacts in the South Sudanese culture and heritage sector will be enabled through greater recognition and understanding of their dispersed cultural heritage, links with overseas institutions and increased national attention on heritage.
- The third sector in South Sudan: civil society organizations involved in community cohesion and cultural understanding will gain access to an important resource for exploring South Sudanese history. More nuanced understandings of South Sudanese history and inter-ethnic relationship that will emerge also have the potential to inform post-conflict interventions and reconciliation processes in South Sudan.
- The wider public in Europe and South Sudan will gain greater understanding and contextualization of the cultural history and arts of South Sudan, and of the economic, cultural and knowledge exchanges between Africa and Europe in the age of exploration and empire.

Significant platforms for impact are built into the network's core activities, and we will take steps to consolidate these opportunities and engage potential research users at appropriate stages. By working with existing contacts and established networks in South Sudan we will be able to reach wider public audiences as well as those professionally engaged in heritage and peace-building. A website will be maintained through the life of the network, which will provide a central point to disseminate and publicise research activities. Media contacts will be utilised at key points to attract wider attention.

The workshops themselves are an important arena for impact. We have adopted a workshop format as the network's principal activity, which is intended to encourage collaboration and engagement between participants from different disciplines and sectors. The structure and activities of the network have been designed to facilitate the co-production of knowledge, enriching academic knowledge and increasing the applicability of the research beyond scholarship. Practitioners from all museums with major South Sudanese collections have confirmed their willingness to participate and their attendance has been budgeted.

Key individuals in South Sudan's cultural and academic sectors are core participants. Senior representatives of civil society organisations, who will bring insights from programming in South Sudan, have been included in the workshops (and budget where appropriate). The final workshop in Juba provides an unrivalled platform to reach a cross section of local and international stakeholders (such as UNESCO) and build a platform for deep and lasting impact on the process of nation building in South Sudan.

The impact strategy will be overseen by the PI, who has extensive experience working with NGOs, policy makers and other research users in South Sudan. Her research has been influential in shaping interventions with customary authorities and local justice in South Sudan (forming the basis of an impact case study for REF 2014). The Co-I brings recent experience of engaging with heritage stakeholders in Kenya (including National Museums of Kenya) on a recent ESRC-funded project about heritage and constitutional reform.