The dissertation project explores, from a transnational perspective, the potential of cultural participation to foster decolonial processes, as well as democratic and critical knowledge production in museums. Museums today, more than ever, face the dual challenge of maintaining their relevance as educational and cultural institutions, while simultaneously fulfilling their educational mandate. These cultural-political transformations constitute the foundational basis for the central research question that guides my dissertation on the decolonization of museums:

To what extent does cultural participation offer the potential to promote decolonization processes within museums?

In this dissertation, I aim to focus on participatory approaches within museum settings as a means to advance decolonial processes. Building on Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s notion that the participation of marginalized and oppressed groups is essential for breaking hegemonic exclusions, I intend to position cultural participation as a central tool to decolonize museum practices.

The planned research project is designed as a cumulative dissertation, structured into three main thematic foci, each supported by distinct but interrelated fields of empirical data collection. The first and most comprehensive data collection—which serves as the foundation and point of departure for the subsequent components—derives from an already completed participatory research project in Austria. This initial study engaged school students in a collaborative exploration of colonialism within the Natural History Museum in Vienna, offering critical insights into their perspectives on the topic.

Building upon these findings, the second focus of the research involves further empirical studies with school students, this time addressing questions of hegemony, participation, and internal colonialism in Southern Italy. The third and final focus introduces another natural history museum as a contrasting case study, examining its decolonial educational practices as a third source of data.

The overarching aim of this research is to contribute an international perspective on the decolonization of museums by, on the one hand, employing Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony as a theoretical lens to analyze power dynamics, and on the other hand, incorporating Spivak’s notion of aesthetic education as it relates to modes of participation and the impact of postcolonial thought on knowledge production. Given their role as institutions of cultural education, museums play a crucial part in the generation and dissemination of critical knowledge.