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Newswise — A consortium that includes a principal investigator from the University of Pretoria (UP) has been awarded funding for a project that will research the colonial history of European universities, and explore how these legacies and heritage can be addressed and curated.

The (COLUMN) project brings together nine academic and cultural sector organisations in eight countries. Collaboration with partners from formerly colonised countries is at the core of the project, which sees research around colonial university heritage as a unique opportunity to develop close international collaborations based firmly on rearticulated power relations. COLUMN is co-financed by the European Research Council’s programme and the for more than €4 million.

“This is the first time that UP’s has been awarded a Horizon Europe,” said principal investigator of the University’s . “To work with COLUMN colleagues, askingquestions about the nature of universities, is humbling. This funding shows what is possible if we all dream big.”

Universities and science, especially in Europe, expanded significantly during the colonial period. Today, the legacy and heritage of this entangled history is encoded in the materiality of many European higher education institutions: buildings are named after contested figures; research collections have a colonial origin; and botanical gardens are silent witnesses of expeditions outside Europe. This project will explore the unique and divergent colonial histories of universities and the contested materialities these have produced.

Unique to this project is the inclusion of partners from Suriname and South Africa as principal investigators in the consortium. Curators from Vietnam, Indonesia, Mexico and other decolonised countries are similarly included as equal partners.

Project leader Gertjan Plets of Utrecht University in the Netherlands said he is glad that initiatives such as the Horizon Europe programme enables scholars to set up a truly global research consortium.

“International collaboration is essential to decolonise scientific heritage and ultimately change the university,” he said.

The project, which runs from April 2025 to March 2029, will see UP collaborating with partners from Surinam (Anton de Kom University), the Netherlands (Utrecht University and Studio Louter), Austria (University of Graz), Switzerland (Geneva University), the Czech Republic (Charles University), Italy (University of Bologna) and Denmark (Aarhus University).