LubaHeritagesBridge Project
The LUBA Heritage Bridge Project is a decolonial and collaborative initiative designed to reconnect fragmented histories and foster the preservation, accessibility, and enrichment of multimedia archival resources related to the Luba cultural group and its diaspora. Spanning the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, and Angola, this project bridges the historical materials housed in GLAM institutions with the lived experiences, narratives, and cultural legacies of the Luba source communities.
Mission 1
Reconnect
Address the colonial disruptions that fractured traditional geographies, power networks, and narratives embedded in GLAM institutions (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) both within and beyond Africa. By challenging extractive practices, repatriating knowledge, and centering African epistemologies, we co-create ethical, community-driven frameworks that restore sovereignty over cultural memory and reweave the broken threads of history. By Reconnecting, we mean bridging colonial and postcolonial multimedia archives with living intangible traditions through the reassembly of fragmented material cultures, oral knowledge, and spiritual practices. We center female Luba institutions—keepers of memory, lineage, and ritual—as the guiding force in reclaiming, interpreting, and reactivating heritage, ensuring that reconnection is not only technical or archival, but deeply rooted in ancestral authority, gendered wisdom, and community sovereignty.
Mission 2
Amplify
Shift focus from isolated "artifacts" to the lived experiences and contributions of LUBA women and communities.
Mission 3
Enrich
Enable Luba community members to engage with and add to these resources, contributing their knowledge, memories, and insights.
Mission 4
Make Accessible
Design tools and platforms that allow current and future scholars, particularly from Luba communities, to access and utilize these collections to address amnesia, cultural loss, and pressing issues.
Scope OF WORK
The project focuses on mapping and connecting multimedia resources, including material cultures, immaterial heritages, audiovisual collections, maps, manuscripts, publications, etc.. It also creates opportunities for storytelling, collaboration, and further research through contributions from institutions, scholars, and community members.
Vision
The LubaHeritagesBridge Project envisions a future where the narratives of Luba women and communities are not only preserved but also activated to inform cultural and traditional continuities, healing and care, transgenerational and transnational female memories, histories, and networks of power, as well as inclusive heritage narratives. By fostering collaboration between GLAM institutions and source communities, the scholar I aim to be acts as a mediator. Hence, this project aims to develop a sustainable model for decolonial heritage work that values both expert and experienced contributions, both material and immaterial.
Contribute
Contributing to this project offers an opportunity to actively support a decolonial and collaborative initiative aimed at reconnecting fragmented histories and amplifying the voices of Luba women. Your contribution can take various forms, including providing access to digitized materials, offering working spaces or travel grants, hosting research visits, or participating in storytelling and narrative-building efforts. Institutions may also support innovative approaches, such as 3D modeling of artifacts or sharing their expertise in Digital Humanities (DH) practices. Every contribution helps enrich the project’s scope, making multimedia collections more accessible, fostering research opportunities, and creating a meaningful impact for current and future scholars.
First Output
The preliminary results of the LUBAHeritagesBridge Project are showcased in an interactive Google MyMap, providing a visual representation of the mapped multimedia resources related to the LUBA group.
Get in touch with us!
We’re here to help. Whether you have a question about our work, want to learn more about our research in Luba cultural heritage, or are interested in how we collaborate with communities to co-create digital archives and multimedia narratives, our team is dedicated to meaningful and informed engagement.
You can reach us by email or connect with us virtually. We’re committed to open dialogue, mutual respect, and collaboration to amplify the voices of those who are marginalized. Because heritage is not held in objects alone, but lives in stories, memory, and the people who carry them forward.