Confidently Changing Colonial Heritage

Informations projet

CONCILIARE

N° de convention de subvention: 101132582

DOI

10.3030/101132582

Date de signature de la CE 7 Novembre 2023

Date de début 1 Mars 2024

Date de fin 28 Février 2027

Financé au titre de

• Culture, creativity and inclusive society

Coût total

€ 2 741 606,25

Contribution de l’UE

€ 2 741 606,25

Coordonné par

UNIVERSIDADE DE COIMBRA
Portugal

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CONCILIARE (Confidently Changing Colonial Heritage)

Période du rapport: 2024-03-01 au 2025-08-31

Résumé du contexte et des objectifs généraux du projet

Across Europe, the conflictive legacies of colonialism have become a central subject of public debate, shaping how societies understand their past and negotiate their future. Colonial Cultural Heritage (CCH), present in textbooks, public spaces, museums, and cultural traditions, plays a significant role in forming collective memory, identity, and intergroup relations. As these elements come under increased scrutiny, their transformation often generates ambivalence, resistance, and polarisation. Citizens may welcome change as a path to justice and inclusion, while others experience it as a threat to national narratives or personal belonging.

CONCILIARE responds to these challenges by analysing how representations and traces of colonialism are being transformed and how these transformations are perceived across different social groups. The project aims to help citizens confidently navigate controversies surrounding colonial history by combining interdisciplinary research with practical, evidence-based tools designed to promote inclusive engagement.

The project pursues three overarching objectives: (1) to map and analyse ongoing transformations in CCH across four domains: textbooks, public spaces, museums, and consumption of cultural products and traditions; (2) to understand emotional, cognitive, and identity-related reactions to such changes in multiple European contexts; and (3) to co-create four confidence-building methods, one per domain, in order to promote constructive dialogue and critical understand of the past and its relationship to the present. CONCILIARE works across six European countries: four with a long-lasting colonial tradition –Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, and Portugal– and two without a direct historical connection to overseas colonial expansion: Croatia and Finland. At its core, CONCILIARE seeks to inform European strategies on heritage, memory, and cultural participation. Its expected impacts include improved inclusiveness in public institutions, critical and stronger trust among communities, and more nuanced policymaking around sensitive historical transformations.

Travail effectué depuis le début du projet jusqu’à la fin de la période considérée dans le rapport et principaux résultats atteints jusqu’à présent

During the first reporting period (M1-M18), the project submitted ten deliverables, including four empirical reports covering scientific progress across all research work packages.

WP1 (Textbooks) analysed more than 200 textbooks from Finland, Italy, and Portugal. Despite national variations, the analysis shows persistent Eurocentric framing: colonisers’ perspectives dominate, violence is minimised, and colonised peoples appear marginalised or stereotyped. Finland tends to externalise colonialism, whilst Italy exhibits decades-long denial tied to Fascist memory, and Portugal continues to draw on Luso-tropicalist narratives despite curricular revisions after de 1974 Carnation Revolution.

WP2 (Public spaces) mapped more than 850 colonial traces in Belgium, Italy, and Portugal, including statues, toponyms, monuments, and architectural sites. While Belgium displays intense contestation, especially around Leopold II, Italy shows limited public debate due to persistent social silencing, and Portugal presents growing but still uneven activism led mainly by Afro-descendant groups. Case studies for in-depth analysis were selected in all countries, and preliminary interviews, mainly in Belgium, provided insights into tensions between decolonial activists, municipal actors, and heritage professionals.

WP3 (Museums) examined the narratives and reconfiguration of exhibitions in the AfricaMuseum in Belgium and the African Museum of Verona in Italy. The museum in Belgum has implemented significant changes but continues to face political pressure, mixed curatorial approaches, and limited trust from diaspora communities. In Italy, strong pedagogical framing is combined with a lack of participation from Afro-descendant groups. An ongoing visitor study and the development of the AMIM (Asymmetric Memory-Identity Model) has already provided innovative foundations for understanding how museum narratives influence emotional responses, especially in the Belgian case.

WP4 (Culture & Traditions) conducted 22 focus groups in Belgium, Croatia, Italy, and the Netherlands to investigate how young people interpret transformations in traditions and cultural practices associated with colonialism or racism. This includes food products, festivities, visual symbols, and commercial brands. Findings indicate a widespread sense of ambivalence: participants often support changes aimed at greater inclusivity, yet such changes can also trigger concerns related to nostalgia or threats over cultural continuity. WP4 also revealed clear national differences in awareness of colonial legacies in daily culture and identified recurring narratives shaping youth reactions, ranging from colour-blind universalism to identity-affirming claims of recognition.

Progrès au-delà de l’état des connaissances et impact potentiel prévu (y compris l’impact socio-économique et les conséquences sociétales plus larges du projet jusqu’à présent)

CONCILIARE advances research on colonial memory in several pioneering ways.

First, it aspires to be one of the most extensive comparative analysis of how citizens from both majority and minority groups in six European countries experience and interpret transformations in CCH across multiple societal domains.

Second, while previous studies treated colonial heritage primarily at a mesa or macro level, CONCILIARE focuses more on different approaches micro-level analysis, linking cultural representations to psychosocial processes, such as emotions, narrative framing and intergroup trust and relationships.

Third, the project develops innovative methodological approaches, integrating social psychology, history, sociology, communication, anthropology, and heritage studies.

Four, CONCILIARE is already in the process of creating four evidence-based methods to promote confidence in CCH across the four studied domains: textbooks, public spaces, museums and consumption of culture and traditions. After testing these methods in small scale pilots, CONCILIARE aspires to disseminate each of these tools across educational institutions, museums, activists, society at large and a wide-range of public and private stakeholders.