Njabulo Chipangura – holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa and is the Curator of Living Culture at Manchester Museum which is part of the University of Manchester. As a curator of Living Cultures, he is responsible for the care of more than 25,000 objects from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, as well as building new research and forming relationships and collaborations. Njabu has interest in empirical ways by which the museum practice can be decolonised through epistemic and aesthetic disobedience benchmarked by undoing earlier ways of knowledge production in collections and exhibition practices. Njabu has published more than a dozen research papers that looks at ongoing debates around the coloniality of museums and associated knowledge production and representation practices, to imagine a decolonised museum in Africa. Some of these articles are included in journals such as Museum Anthropology, Curator; The Museum Journal, Journal of Southern African Studies, Development Southern Africa, Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage, Museum International, Museum Management and Curatorship and International Journal of Intangible Heritage. He has also contributed articles in books such as Museums Activism, Robert Janes and Richard Sandell (eds), London: Routledge, pp. 164-173, and Research Handbook on Contemporary Intangible Cultural Heritage Law and Heritage, Charlotte Waelde et.al (eds), Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp.379-398. His first book entitled Museums as Agents for Social Change: Collaborative Programmes at the Mutare Museum was published by Routledge in April 2021. Njabu is board member of the Collections Committee (COMCOL) – International Council of Museums and also sit on the board of Museum International (Taylor and Francis) Cogent: Arts and Humanities Journal (Taylor and Francis) where he is the editor of Museums and Heritage Studies.
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