berghahn New York · Oxford

Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations

Foreword: Ending Colonial Complicities: Europe and the Intersectional Struggles for Racial Justice
Annalisa Frisina

Introduction: Decolonizing Europe: Ethnographies of National and Transnational Projects
Patrícia Ferraz de Matos and Livio Sansone

Chapter 1. Decolonizing Europe and the Problem of Neonationalism
Jordan Kiper and Chadra Pittman

Chapter 2. The Measure of Time: Repurposing the Archives, Repatriating Human Remains
Pegi Vail

Chapter 3. People of African Descent and Antiracist Mobilization in Post-Imperial Portugal
Bruno Sena Martins

Chapter 4. Decolonizing Education [in Italy and Portugal] through Arts: Pass the Mic!
Francesca De Luca and Anna Serlenga

Chapter 5. On (De)Colonial Education, Anthropological Knowledge and ‘Heritage Digestion’: Insights on the History of Anthropology in Portugal
Carmeliza Rosario and Ema Pires

Chapter 6. The Kurdish Struggle as an Anticolonial Dynamo: From Nationalist Struggle to Militant Internationalism
José Vicente Mertz

Chapter 7. Rethinking Conflicts: The Cold War Museum in Žemaitija National Park
Vida Savoniakaitė

Chapter 8. Debunking the Colonial Narrative in Belgium: Public Space Decolonization in Brussels and Cultural Objects Restitution to Central African Countries
Axel Mudahemuka Gossiaux

Epilogue: The Future of the Decolonial: Contradictory Tendencies in Europe
Patrícia Ferraz de Matos and Livio Sansone

Index

Decolonizing Europe

Ethnographies of National and Transnational Projects

Edited by Patrícia Ferraz de Matos and Livio Sansone

236 pages, 20 ills., bibliog., index

ISBN 978-1-83695-248-0 Hb Published (November 2025)

eISBN 978-1-83695-249-7
web ISBN 978-1-83695-249-7

Details

“This is a very important contribution for those dedicated to decolonial studies… one of the highlights of the book is the diversity of experiences and context examined by researchers of various nationalities and academic, institutional and professional backgrounds.” • Fatima Cecchetto, National School of Public Health of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation

Inspired by the global resonance of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, this book adds to the current discussion on the idea of decolonizing Europe. Drawing inspiration from the study of colonialism, postcolonialism and the imperative to decolonize knowledge and practice, the editors bring together a group of scholars approaching these issues through ethnographic inquiry. The volume explores how race, colonial legacies and structural inequality are addressed across diverse European contexts – north, central, eastern and southern – as well as in their entanglements with regions beyond Europe. It offers critical, grounded insights into the possibilities and challenges of decolonial thinking today.

Ferraz de Matos is an associated researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon. She is Associate Editor of the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures (2020–2026), convener of the Europeanist Network of the EASA (2020–2026), deputy director of the journal Análise Social (2021–2026) and correspondent member, in Portugal, of the History of Anthropology Network of EASA since 2019.

Livio Sansone is Professor of anthropology at the Federal University of Bahia. He is the head of the Factory of Ideas Programme – an advanced international course in ethnic and African studies – and coordinates the Digital Museum of African and Afro-Brazilian Heritage. His most recent books are La Galassia Lombroso, l’Africa e l’America Latina (Laterza, 2022), Field Station Bahia: Brazil in the Work of Lorenzo Dow Turner, E. Franklin Frazier and Frances and Melville Herskovits, 1935-1967 (Brill, 2022).

Subject: Political and Economic Anthropology Colonial History

Area: Europe

BISAC: SOC002010 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/Cultural & Social; SOC008060 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Ethnic Studies/European Studies; SOC020000 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Minority Studies