D6: Restitution, Nuclear and Colonial Legacies
Tracks
6
| Monday, November 30, 2026 |
| 10:45 AM - 12:00 PM |
| RH102 |
Overview
Stream: Heritage Governance, Policy and Power
Paper / Session Submitter
Mr Ryan John Ellis
PhD Researcher
University of York & The Royal Air Force Museum
Resilient Traces: Reframing colonial Cold War sites within a transnational heritage framework
Summary Abstract
RAF Changi’s history remains marginal within Singapore’s authorised heritage discourse, despite the site’s importance to Britain’s regional Cold War presence and its closure more than 50 years ago. The result is a fragmented memory landscape in which official narratives, community recollections, and veteran-edited digital spaces rarely converge.
By adopting a transnational Cold War heritage framework, this paper proposes a new postcolonial model for decision-making that engages with entangled histories and incorporates sites of colonial leisure, commemoration, and social control.
Drawing on postcolonial theory, the model highlights the need to recognise the heritage values of contested yet resilient traces, particularly where they have been repurposed to construct national mythologies. It also explores how a critical approach towards heritage management may redistribute interpretative agency toward non-Western actors.
The paper contributes to ACHS 2026’s ‘ki mua, ki muri’ sub-theme, contributing to debates on decolonisation, contested memory, and community-centred heritage futures.
By adopting a transnational Cold War heritage framework, this paper proposes a new postcolonial model for decision-making that engages with entangled histories and incorporates sites of colonial leisure, commemoration, and social control.
Drawing on postcolonial theory, the model highlights the need to recognise the heritage values of contested yet resilient traces, particularly where they have been repurposed to construct national mythologies. It also explores how a critical approach towards heritage management may redistribute interpretative agency toward non-Western actors.
The paper contributes to ACHS 2026’s ‘ki mua, ki muri’ sub-theme, contributing to debates on decolonisation, contested memory, and community-centred heritage futures.
Biographies
Ryan John Ellis is a WRoCAH-funded (AHRC) PhD researcher at the University of York, working with The Royal Air Force Museum on the heritage significance of former RAF Changi, Singapore. He is Vice Chair of The Cold War Network and serves on the Royal Navy Museums’ Youth Advisory Group.
Dr Erika Yuni Astuti
Lecturer
School of Architecture, Planning And Policy Development -institut Teknologi Bandung (itb)
Presenting life and its architectural context in Indonesia: Hindu statues as living beings
Summary Abstract
Discussions around restitutions and involving Indonesia and the Netherlands have encouraged the growth of provenance research within scholarly communities. This is evident in the case of the Bhairawa, Ganesha, Nandi, and Brahma statues originally from Singhasari Temple in Malang. They returned in 2023 from Wereldculturen Leiden, where they had been held for 200 years, to the Indonesian National Museum in Jakarta, approximately 600 kilometers from their place of origin in East Java. Restitution should be a process of shared decision-making. Communities from which these entities originate should be treated as equal partners alongside former colonial powers, and their social, spiritual and ancestral relationships must be acknowledged. In Indonesia, temples are living sites where rituals are regularly performed, not merely as ceremonial practices but as a means of maintaining harmony. Restitution should depart from such communities of practices in which statues are not objects or national heritage, but living beings.
Biographies
Erika Yuni Astuti,
Lecturer, School of Architecture, Planning and Policy Development, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia (https://scholar.itb.ac.id/profiles_detail/erika-yuni-astuti_1589 )
Willy Himawan,
Lecturer and Artist, Faculty of Art and Design, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia (https://scholar.itb.ac.id/profiles_detail/willy-himawan_720)
Lucas da Costa Maciel
Post Doctoral Researcher of the Faculty of Archaeology University of Leiden, the Netherlands
(https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/lucas-da-costa-maciel#tab-1)
Amy Shakespeare
AHRC-funded PhD Student - University of Exeter, United Kingdom
(https://experts.exeter.ac.uk/35596-amy-shakespeare)
Dr Patricia Ayala
Associate Professor
Universidad de Chile
Why Terminology Matters: Debates on Return among the Atacameño People
Summary Abstract
The growing relevance of processes of return and repatriation of human remains and associated materials, both in Indigenous claims and in academic and institutional debates in Chile, highlights the need to critically reflect on the terminology used in these contexts.
The Atacameño People have a long history of demands related to the return, reburial, and non-exhibition of their ancestors. Currently, different concepts are used to refer to these processes, with temporal and political variations in their use in Atacameño territory, alongside the formalization of the debate at the national level and its articulation with international discussions.
From a decolonial perspective, this paper analyses the cultural and political implications of these terminology, arguing that naming these processes constitutes a field of negotiation, disputes and power between Indigenous peoples, the State, and academia.
The Atacameño People have a long history of demands related to the return, reburial, and non-exhibition of their ancestors. Currently, different concepts are used to refer to these processes, with temporal and political variations in their use in Atacameño territory, alongside the formalization of the debate at the national level and its articulation with international discussions.
From a decolonial perspective, this paper analyses the cultural and political implications of these terminology, arguing that naming these processes constitutes a field of negotiation, disputes and power between Indigenous peoples, the State, and academia.
Biographies
Patricia Ayala: Professor at the University of Chile. Her research explores the intersections between Indigenous peoples, archaeologists, and the State, with a particular focus on heritage-making processes and ethics.
Benjamin Candia: Anthropologist and Master's student at the University of Buenos Aires. He researches the repatriation and reburial of human remains and cultural objects. Researcher for the project "Patrimonializating and collecting of indigenous bodies in Atacameño territory."
Claudia Ogalde: Archaeologist and Master in Anthropology. She is a PhD candidate in Anthropology UCN-UTA and her research seeks to understand the processes of patrimonialization in extractivist contexts. Member of the project "Patrimonializating and collecting of indigenous bodies in Atacameño territory".
Carlos Aguilar: A member of the Atacameño Lickan Antay people, he has worked in agriculture, crafts, construction, cultural management, and repatriation. He is a cultural keeper and researcher for the project "Patrimonializating and collecting of indigenous bodies in Atacameño territory".
Cristian Espíndola: member of the Atacameño Lickanatay people. Farmer, surveyor, and researcher dedicated to study the ancestral remains from Toconao, the first human settlements and the effects of climate change in Lickanantay territory. Member of the project "Patrimonializating and collecting of indigenous bodies in Atacameño territory".
Miss Megan Thomas
PhD Student
University Of Liverpool
Atomic entanglement: Reimagining affective sociotechnical interactions at nuclear cultural heritage sites
Summary Abstract
This paper builds upon growing critical engagement with nuclear cultural heritage to suggest that sociotechnical imaginaries and interactions, as relational forces, have the capacity to disrupt linear narratives of the nuclear past. Here, British nuclear bunkers are presented as sites of entangled human, non-human, and more-than-human connections. This paper reveals a plurality of lived experience at contested nuclear sites, drawing upon reminiscence sessions, sociotechnical histories, object biographies, and walking embodied interviews. The deterministic and singular narrative propounded at these sites fundamentally upholds and reproduces nuclear deterrence logic, thus ‘productive’ nuclear fear and global atomic order (Masco, 2008). However, inheriting this ‘atomic anxiety’ can be disrupted by reframing human behaviour in nuclear spaces as a complex, interwoven continuum of sociotechnical interactions which engender a range of ‘real’ and imagined realities in the nuclear age. This creates discursive space for alternative, more hopeful, futures.
Biographies
I am an ESRC doctoral student based at the University of Liverpool. My project is funded by the NWSSDTP in CASE partnership with English Heritage. My research interests lie at the intersection of histories of emotion and technology, critical archival studies, Cold War heritage, and the phenomenology of imagination.
