The heritage researcher

When Sophia Labadi is sitting at her desk, jazz can usually be heard from her study. “I like the fact that this music is so creative and diverse. It has always fascinated me that one and the same piece can sound quite different when it is being improvised.” In the mid-1990s, when she was a politics and social science undergraduate, she volunteered at the famous Grenoble Jazz Festival. “I helped to organise an exhibition called ‘Jazz’ which featured paper cut-outs by Henri Matisse – an experience that inspired me so much that I looked for a Master’s course that was closely linked to art, museums and culture. So, I applied to the Heritage Studies Master at University College London,” Sophia Labadi recalls. Fast forward two decades and she is now a professor of heritage at the University of Kent, UK, with a reputation as an outstanding interdisciplinary researcher in her field. She was recently granted the Reimar Lüst Award for International Scholarly and Cultural Exchange, which the Humboldt Foundation confers jointly with the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. One core question informs her academic work: How can heritage contribute to sustainable development in fields such as poverty reduction and climate change?

Dynamic heritage
According to Labadi, if you want to understand the conditions under which heritage can help drive sustainable development you should take a critical look at the current definition of the term. “Cultural heritage is still seen as an unchangeable part of the past – an attitude that can lead to potentially innovative solutions that the past could offer us being missed or ignored.” This was the case at the Senegalese UNESCO World Heritage site, Sine Saloum, that Labadi visited during field studies for her 2022 book, “Rethinking Heritage for Sustainable Development”. The extensive swamps at the mouth of the Saloum and Sine rivers where they join the Atlantic Ocean are dotted with tiny islands and mangrove forests. Here, shell middens dating back to 5000 B.C. served the population as efficient barriers against rising sea levels – originally only caused by the tides, later by climate change, as well – until they were recently removed for building material. “Traditional solutions are often dismissed as irrelevant and the local population looked upon as though they were living in the past. Interestingly, countries like the United States and the Netherlands are currently using oyster reefs once again for coastal defence,” says Labadi. She calls for a holistic, dynamic concept of heritage. Dividing heritage up into “tangible” and “intangible” is Eurocentric, she claims, and can actually prevent development. “We also have to recognise that culture and nature are inextricably linked. You can’t understand a city like Paris without the Seine. The same goes for many world heritage sites.”

One example of a World Heritage site that transcends the categories of natural and cultural heritage, conveying a more complex narrative, is Robben Island in South Africa, says Labadi. The former prison there, in which Nelson Mandela, amongst others, was held for many years, is now a museum where former political prisoners give guided tours. A solar plant helps to produce clean energy, and socio-economic initiatives in the form of a craft centre support the relatives of former inmates. Labadi says, “If you want to successfully manage heritage in African countries beyond colonial structures, you have to think holistically.” Whilst heritage is being considered as a way of combating poverty, for instance through tourism, according to Labadi, the neocolonial attitude that tourists from the Global North could put an end to poverty still exists: Locals are often trained to do precarious jobs that essentially fulfil the needs of foreigners, such as tour guides or service staff in hotels and restaurants largely owned by White people. Labadi says, “Tourism needs to be seriously re-thought so that local communities reap the benefits.” 

Research in practice
Her theories and insights not only shape the academic discourse, but also the practice of heritage management worldwide. Labadi thus cooperates with international organisations, such as UNESCO and the World Bank, as well as with governments in countries like South Korea, advising, for instance, on developing heritage strategies, on publications and on new curricula on the topic of heritage and museums. “This practical perspective enriches my work enormously and constantly generates new research questions,” says Labadi. “My research should be beneficial and tackle social challenges,” she continues. “As a researcher, I also have a responsibility to society. I can’t conceive of not addressing the problems of real life.” And it is also important to her that more African heritage sites should be recognised. “Since I started doing my research, more than half of the World Heritage sites are still in Europe – this colonial symbolism urgently needs dismantling.” 

Linked with her own identity
Originally, Labadi didn’t really want to work on topics like colonialism and diversity. “It was only when I got my first permanent academic position and later a full professorship that I started to do so.” In 2019, Labadi was the first woman of African heritage – she is a member of the Kabyle, an Indigenous Berber people of Algeria – to be appointed to a professorship in cultural heritage in the United Kingdom. “It was an historic moment for me, not only because of my origins, but also because I am the first female academic from a family that belonged to the so-called lower class.” It was only when she was sure that the academic world firmly associated her name with cultural heritage research that she started working on migration and justice issues – topics that are also linked with her own identity. “It means a lot to me not to be pigeonholed as a researcher with an immigrant background working only on cultural heritage and migration issues.”

For her book, “Museums, Immigrants, and Social Justice”, Labadi used case studies to investigate how museums can help address key issues faced by immigrants. She cites the example of the Danish National Gallery: During a six-week programme for language school students, the participants worked on interpretations of artworks of their choice and presented them in Danish during museum tours. Labadi says, “Museums should recognise that immigrants who learn their host country’s language can both help to interpret collections and make visits easier for other migrants.” Moreover, her research has revealed that in spite of all the efforts at structural level, there is still a fundamental need for action. Artists, who are People of Colour, for example, are seldom an integral part of permanent exhibitions but tend to feature at the periphery of temporary exhibitions. “European museums are colonial institutions, and their work is inculcated with colonial practices.” One way of starting to change this, Labadi believes, would be “to employ migrants and People of Colour with decision-making power who really want to change the core of museum practice.” 

Decolonised thinking
It is not only in museums, however, that colonial structures persist. Labadi says, “We see these mechanisms everywhere. In Francophone Africa, for example, where children use schoolbooks produced in France from which they learn very little about their own history.” Or at her daughter’s school: “The only People of Colour who work there are cleaners and canteen staff, not teachers,” says Labadi.

In her most recent project, she is studying colonial statues in post-colonial Africa and exploring the question as to whether history is destroyed when they are removed from the public domain. “If we accept that heritage is dynamic, we can take down statues to make way for a heritage that is more in tune with local history,” is Labadi’s position. At the moment, she is also interested in artistic approaches that could replace statues in the public domain and make people think – like the installation PeopL by the Belgian-Rwandan artist Laura Nsengiyumva: an ice replica of the equestrian statue of King Leopold II, who was responsible for the colonisation of the Congo Free State and the subsequent exploitation of its resources. Over the course of a long evening, during the artistic event “Nuit Blanche”, the artist melted the statue of the Belgian colonial ruler in front of an audience in the covered courtyard of a Brussels primary school. Labadi believes “it was a very fitting way of showing what a complex and protracted process it is to alter colonial structures and bring about change.”