Academic title: Senior University Lecturer (tenured position)

CV | Damiana Oţoiu is a political and legal anthropologist (PhD, Université Libre de Bruxelles), currently an assistant professor at the Political Science Department, University of Bucharest. Her research is focused on how property rights over museum collections are (re)defined and disputed in postcolonial contexts. She has carried out long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, France and Belgium, and co-ordinated several research projects, including Museums and Controversial Collections. Politics and Policies of Heritage-Making in Post-colonial and Post-socialist Contexts (2015–17) and Decolonial Practices in Museum Collections (Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa): Local Histories and Global Circulations (2021–22).

Research fields: Museum Studies, Legal and Political Anthropology, History and Anthropology of Scientific Practices, Politics and Urban Policies in Southern Africa, DR Congo and Romania

Courses:  SSL, SPF, MPE

Recent publications:

• Damiana Oțoiu, “What is our role? Will we be able to work on equal terms?” collaboration and controversies over the renovation of AfricaMuseum (Tervuren), in International Journal of Heritage Studies, 31(3), 2025, pp. 358–372: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13527258.2024.2437346

• Damiana Oțoiu, « Quand les « spécimens » d’anthropologie physique redeviennent ancêtres. Les matériaux ethnographiques sur les populations autochtones de l’Afrique Australe à l’ère de la science ouverte » [When physical anthropology ‘specimens’ become ancestors again. Ethnographic materials on the indigenous populations of Southern Africa in the age of Open Science], in Ethnologie française, 54 (2), 2024, pp. 33-46: https://shs.cairn.info/revue-ethnologie-francaise-2024-2-page-33?lang=fr

• Felicity Bodenstein, Damiana Oțoiu, Anna Seiderer, and Margareta von Oswald, Traces du dé/colonial au musée [Traces of de/coloniality in the museum], Horizons d’attente, Paris, 2024.  

• Damiana Oțoiu, « Restitution », « transfert », « retour » des collections muséales. Enjeux historico-politiques, juridiques et épistémiques [« Restitution, », « transfer » and « return » of museum collections. Historical, political, legal and epistemic issues], in Felicity Bodenstein, Damiana Oțoiu, Anna Seiderer, and Margareta von Oswald, Traces du dé/colonial au musée [Traces of de/coloniality in the museum], Horizons d’attente, Paris, 2024, pp. 39 – 65,

• Felicity Bodenstein, Damiana Oțoiu, and Eva Maria Troelenberg (eds), Contested Holdings: Museum Collections in Political, Epistemic and Artistic Processes of Return. Oxford, New York, Berghahn Books, 2022. https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/BodensteinContested

• Damiana Oțoiu, « (De)Museifying Collections of Physical Anthropology. The Display and/ or the Restitution of Human Remains of Indigenous Peoples from Southern Africa» in Felicity Bodenstein, Damiana Oțoiu, and Eva Maria Troelenberg (eds), Contested Holdings: Museum Collections in Political, Epistemic and Artistic Processes of Return. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, 2022, pp. 175-193 https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/BodensteinContested

Topics for BA/MA coordination:  (1) museum studies (political history of museum collections), (2) legal and political anthropology, (3) history and anthropology of scientific practices, (4) politics and urban policies in South Africa, D.R. Congo and Romania

Office hours: Thursday, 9.00 am – 11.30 am, prior appointment by e-mail required

E-mail: damiana.otoiu@fspub.unibuc.ro