The Research Center for Material Culture is hosting a two-day international symposium, The grammar of reparation: A creative and research symposium, in collaboration with Prof Carlos Garrido Castellano and Beatriz Dantas Vieira (University College Cork and the ARTFICTIONS Project, Ireland).
The symposium explores the relationship between narrative and questions of repair, reparation, and restitution. The organisers ask what the lexicon of reparation might be, what narrative strategies can help repair the wounds of the past, and whether stories can repair (and be repaired). Scholars and practitioners from around the world will address these questions through a range of perspectives and multimodal approaches.
Speakers will include USF International Fellow Dr Maria Raquel Passos Lima. Dr Passos Lima is an anthropologist at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Amsterdam. Her research examines waste and toxicity in urban life and waterscapes in the Global South.
Date: 29–30 October 2026
Location: Studio, Wereldmuseum Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Further details on the symposium are available here: https://www.materialculture.nl/en/events/grammar-reparation-creative-and-research-symposium