Scientific organization:
Carmen Belmonte (Università di Padova; Bibliotheca Hertziana – MPI),
Laura Moure Cecchini (Università di Padova),
Nicola Camilleri (Maynooth University; Università Roma Tre),
Bianca Gaudenzi (Università di Firenze; Wolfson College, University of Cambridge).

Thursday 4 December 2025

09.00 – 09:30 Welcome & opening remarks
Carmen Belmonte (Università di Padova)
Laura Moure Cecchini (Università di Padova)
Nicola Camilleri (Maynooth University; Università Roma Tre)
Bianca Gaudenzi (Università di Firenze; Wolfson College, University of Cambridge)

09:30 – 13.00 Panel I: Propaganda and its Legacies
Chair: Tristan Weddigen (Bibliotheca Hertziana – Istituto Max Planck per la Storia dell’arte)

Agnese Ghezzi (Libera Università di Bolzano)
Bound Memories: Colonial Propaganda and the Material Life of a Photographic Album

Sara Vitacca (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur, Centre Lucien Febvre, Besançon)
Metallic Propaganda: The Medagliere Libico and the Role of Medals
in Forging Italian Colonial Narratives

11:00 - 11:30 COFFEE BREAK

Chair: Raffaele Bedarida (Sapienza, Università di Roma)

Paolo Novak (SOAS, London)
Everyday coloniality and migration in a central Italian province

Livia Dubon Bohlig (Kingston University London)
Colonial Photography as Sensorial Object: Embodied Listening and the Adwa Case Study

13:00 – 14:00 LUNCH (only for speakers and chairs)

14.00 – 16:15 Panel II: The Empire at Home
Chair: Petra Terhoeven (Istituto Storico Germanico di Roma)

Victoria Witkowski (University of Southern Denmark, Odense)
Playing Empire: Fascist-era Board Games and their Postcolonial Echoes

Chiara Rubessi (ISIA Design Firenze; ISIA Design Roma)
Gli arredi di Carlo Bugatti come agenti di significato nel contesto coloniale italiano

Tommaso Mammini (Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona)
A Colonial Whip between Personal Memory and Fascist Ideology

16.15 – 16.45 COFFEE BREAK

16:45 – 19:00 Panel III: Colonial nature
Chair: Lorenzo Benadusi (Università Roma Tre)
Tairan An (gta Institute, ETH Zurich)
Anatomy of a Skin: Logistics, the Lodge, and Italian Colonial Ornithology

Tiziana N. Beltrame & Luca Tonetti (Università di Padova)
Storie di carta: buste e campioni di un botanico in missione in Tripolitania

Virginia Magnaghi (Bibliotheca Hertziana – Istituto Max Planck per la Storia dell’arte)
The Uegit Meteorite: Towards a Material History of the Italian Colonial Landscape through a Celestial Body

Friday 5 December 2025
9.00 – 12:30 Panel IV: Spoliation and Restitution
Chair: Uoldelul Chelati Dirar (Università di Macerata)

Lorenzo Declich (ISMEO, Roma)
Metaoggetti coloniali: inventari e liste del Museo coloniale di Roma

Thomas Demewez (Addis Ababa University)
Tracing the Trajectories of Ethiopian Material Culture linked to Italian Colonialism: Ras Desta Damtew Attires in Italian Collections in Focus

10.30 – 11.00 COFFEE BREAK

Chair: Laura Iamurri (Università Roma Tre)

Silvia Iannelli (Università di Padova e Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia)
The Wakka of the Konso People of Southern Ethiopia: From Spoliation to Re-Signification

Giulia Beatrice (Bibliotheca Hertziana – Istituto Max Planck per la Storia dell’arte)
Tsehai’s Flight. Looting, Memory, and the Making of Colonial “Aeroculture”

12:30 – 13:30 LUNCH (only for speakers and chairs)

13:30 – 17:00 Panel V: The Empire in the Museum
Chair: Gaia Delpino (Museo delle Civiltà, Roma)

Antonella Gioli (Università di Pisa)
Una bandiera etiope e altri oggetti da Addis Abeba a Livorno: manufatti, musealizzazione e cultura visiva

Marco Foravalle (Scuola IMT Alti Studi, Lucca)
Exhibiting Colonial Subjugation: The Tricolour Shield of Dejaz Hapte Mikael in the Royal Armoury of Turin

15:00 - 15:15 COFFEE BREAK

Chair: Rosa Anna Di Lella (Museo delle Civiltà, Roma)

Matilde Vernuccio (Università di Torino)
Il lämd di däğğazmač Habtä Mika’el. Interpretazioni conflittuali sulla provenienza di un manto etiopico

Davide Zendri (MITAG - Museo Storico italiano della Guerra, Rovereto)
Dono, negoziazione, sottrazione, rappresentazione: Il Revolver a cinque canne sistema Pepperbox, Cirenaica, Libia, metà secolo.

Final discussion

Participation online will be possible through the Vimeo channel.
The links will be published soon here https://www.biblhertz.it/events/43901/2643800

The conference is organized as part of the research unit Decolonizing Italian Visual and Material Culture (https://www.biblhertz.it/3230527/Decolonizing-Italian-Visual-and-Material-Culture) of the Department Weddigen at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, in collaboration with the Contemporary History section of the German Historical Institute in Rome.
A joint event will take place on March 26th 2026 at the Italian Academy, Columbia University, New York with the generous support of the Ragusa Foundation for the Humanities.