This project aims to:

• Investigate the official narratives African states and heritage bodies create around sites that were once places of imprisonment either under colonial rule or during anti-colonial struggles.

• Explore the ways in which these official narratives are contested: What elements are disputed? By whom? And with what effects?

• Examine how these processes interact with broader socio-political contexts in different states.

   

These insights will be used to:

• Illuminate the politics surrounding the memory of colonial imprisonment.

• Uncover what the struggles over the heritage of colonial imprisonment reveal about current penal policy debates.

• Reflect on what this deeper understanding of colonial penal heritage in Africa tells us about struggles over colonial memory across the globe.