PhD candidate Henrique Entratice has been selected for the 2024 edition of TheMuseumsLab, a platform for joint learning, exchange of perspectives, networking, and career development between African and European professionals. Henrique Entratice is the second IHC researcher to be selected for TheMuseumsLab. In 2023, Elisabete Pereira, the PI of the TRANSMAT project, was also a fellow.

In 2024, 50 fellowships were awarded to people from 20 African countries and 15 European countries. Activities began in June with a first online module and will continue until November. The highlight of the programme will be the meeting of all the participants in September at the Natural History Museum in Berlin. Henrique Entratice will also do a residency at the Museum of World Cultures in Frankfurt and, in November, visit Ghana’s capital, Accra, to get to better know the museums and the cultural sector of that African country. There, he will have the opportunity to discuss topics such as museum management, the treatment of objects from colonial contexts, exhibition development, collection development, digitisation and counter-narratives and perspectives on museums.

For Henrique, “TheMuseumLab is a project connected to current discussions about museums and cultural heritage, bringing people engaged with innovative activities from the most diverse museums in Africa and Europe.” In a thread on X, he recounted his experience in the first module — Reimagining the museums of the future — emphasising that it gave him “a comprehensive and thought-provoking overview of the key interrelated themes of museums and heritage”. The module covered topics such as “power imbalances and supranational inefficacy in protecting non-Western cultural heritage”, the “evolving museum roles and reparative actions in restitution processes”, or “the need to take museum narratives and activities outside to impact communities via digital dynamics”.

At the IHC, Henrique Entratice is developing the PhD project in Anthropology “Surviving in museum confinement: cultural diplomacy, Karajá dolls and Xambioá resistance“, in partnership with the Federal University of Goiás (Brazil). He is also a visiting researcher at the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin, where he works with the American Ethnology collection. His research interests include cultural rights, the legal protection of intangible cultural heritage, colonial transits of Amerindian artefacts and museum management.