Online engagement, African archives & digital public history | SCOLMA 2024 Seminar 5

The exponential development of digital tools and platforms from Whatsapp to Digital Humanities have radically shifted opportunities for public history - new opportunities for collective sense-making and narrating the past. Chaired by Dr Helen Mears (Royal Museums Greenwich), this round table discussion addresses the work involved in engaging discussion around African collections through these platforms, re-mixing and connecting collections, short-circuiting colonial logics.
In very diverse ways our three panellists have developed projects that have brought together transnational audiences and African collections: Dr Érika Melek Delgado (King’s College, London) co-director of the Freedom Narratives Database, Dr JC Niala (History of Science Museum, Oxford) who has led UK discussion on transforming community access to African collections, and Dr Anne Samson (independent historian) founder of the online Great War in Africa Association. What are the successes and difficulties of virtual collaboration, in creating and sustaining online audiences and projects, and what they have learned through their processes about the needs and interests of online audiences for UK African collections?