Heritage, Museums and Memorialisation in Kenya

HERITAGE, MUSEUMS AND MEMORIALISATION IN KENYA

Exploring the past in the present

Welcome to our site. It celebrates research on contemporary heritage developments in Kenya, with some comparative reference to South Africa.

We are working with Kenyan museums, scholars, students, NGOs, communities and other civil society groups to investigate the different ways in which Kenyans are engaging with heritage, memory and identity. There is a strong peace and reconciliation theme to our study, since Kenya is grappling with a painful legacy of civil conflict and trauma. Nationhood is also central, because shared heritage, memory and identity helps to create a sense of nation – or in the absence of shared narratives, to divide it. Our focus is contemporary society, seen from an historical perspective.

This three-year collaborative project is called ‘Managing Heritage, Building Peace: Museums, memorialisation and the uses of memory in Kenya’. It is generously funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), while a partnership element that preceded this award is funded by the British Academy (see next page). Our warmest thanks go to both donors.

Through multi-sited fieldwork and other means the project is investigating and documenting how Kenyans engage with the issues mentioned above. It is concerned both with state-led national heritage management and community-driven heritage initiatives, which include community peace museums, community ecological governance of sacred forests, and other activities around sites of memory.

Some key questions include:
• what does heritage mean to ordinary Kenyans?
• in what ways does heritage define Kenyans, and Kenya as a nation?
• how is the Mau Mau struggle being commemorated today?
• what is remembered about the past, what is ‘forgotten’ and why?

Website updated: 07 July 2009

This project is grateful for the support of: