Welcome to the website of the AHRC funded network ‘New explorations into South Sudanese museum collections in Europe’.

This international 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. We are investigating a huge but largely untapped resource for advancing understandings of South Sudan’s history, global connections and creative arts.

We shall be examining material evidence to answer questions about South Sudan’s past. 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?

During the AHRC-funded period of the network, we will hold three workshops and share outputs on this site. Our resources page explains where you can see South Sudanese collections in museums in eight countries and contains links to online collections which can be accessed from anywhere in the world.

The image above is part of a bowl made by a potter named Mbitim in Li Rangu (in former Western Equatoria state of South Sudan). It was collected by Major Powell-Cotton in 1933 and is now on display at the Powell-Cotton Museum in Kent, United Kingdom.