On September 17th, Dr. Shadia Abdrabo Abdelwahab Abdalla (National Corporation of Antiquities and Museums) will present “Erasing Cultural Memory: The Memoricide of Cultural Identity in Sudan’s Modern History” as a guest lecture of the PCMA Seminar.
Dr Shadia Abdrabo is Senior Curator at the Sudan National Museum and Deputy Director of NCAM’s Museum Section. She is currently responsible for establishing an online platform within the Circulating Artifacts Unit at NCAM to preserve cultural heritage data in Sudan. She is based in Paris for a year, at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (INHA), to centralize the artifact data collected in a cloud and to create a collection database of the Sudan National Museum as part of the Circulating Artifacts project conducted in partnership with NCAM, the Louvre, the British Museum, the French Archaeological Unit for Sudanese Antiquities (SFDAS), and INHA.
Cultural memory—shared narratives, traditions, monuments, languages, and archaeological sites—forms the backbone of collective identity. Yet, in times of conflict, war, colonization, and political upheaval, this memory often becomes a deliberate target. This presentation explores the impact of war and other factors on Sudanese collective memory and how cultural memory is systematically erased through the destruction of heritage sites, suppression of indigenous languages, and displacement of communities. It shows how this process not only damages physical heritage but also erases collective memory and identity, and considers ways in which we can address these challenges.
The visit of Dr Shadia Abdrabo was made possible by a grant from the Centre for Research on Ancient Civilization (CRAC), University of Warsaw, within the program: Support for the Visits of International Guests.
The seminar will be held on Wednesday, 17th September at 2 pm (Warsaw time) on the Zoom platform and at the PCMA UW office (15/17 Tyniecka st., 02-630 Warsaw) in room 119.
To receive the link, please email: seminarium.pcma@uw.edu.pl