Damiana Gabriela Otoiu
Term
Professional affiliation
Wilson Center Projects
- The Repatriation of Colonial Museum Collections and Knowledge Construction in the Genomic Era
- Property Restitution and Ethnonational Political Discourses and Projects in Postcommunist Romania (May–August 2010)
Full Biography
Damiana Oţoiu is a political and legal anthropologist (PhD, Université Libre de Bruxelles), currently an assistant professor at the Political Science Department, University of Bucharest. Her research is focused on how property rights over museum collections are (re)defined and disputed in postcolonial contexts. She has carried out long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, France and Belgium, and co-ordinated several research projects, including Museums and Controversial Collections. Politics and Policies of Heritage-Making in Post-colonial and Post-socialist Contexts (2015–17) and Decolonial Practices in Museum Collections (Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa): Local Histories and Global Circulations (2021–22).
Major Publications
- Felicity BODENSTEIN, Damiana OŢOIU, Anna SEIDERER, Margareta VON OSWALD, Traces. Les manifestations du (dé)colonial au musée, Horizons d’attente, Paris, forthcoming 2023.
- Damiana OŢOIU, « Diaspora(s) », « communautés d’origine » et collections muséales. Collaboration et controverses autour de la rénovation du Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale, à Tervuren in New Europe College Yearbook, 2018-2019, NEC, Bucuresti, 2023, pp. 169-194
- Felicity BODENSTEIN, Damiana OŢOIU, Eva Maria TROELENBERG (ed.), Contested Holdings: Museum Collections in Political, Epistemic and Artistic Processes of Return, New York, Berghahn Books, 2022
- Damiana OŢOIU, « (De)Museifying Collections of Physical Anthropology. The Display and/ or the Restitution of Human Remains of Indigenous Peoples from Southern Africa» in Felicity BODENSTEIN, Damiana OŢOIU, Eva Maria TROELENBERG (ed.), Contested Holdings: Museum Collections in Political, Epistemic and Artistic Processes of Return, New York, Berghahn Books, 2022, pp. 177-195
Previous Terms
May–August 2010