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:  SPR, SPF, MPE

Recent publications:

• Felicity BODENSTEIN, Damiana OŢOIU, Anna SEIDERER, Margareta VON OSWALD, Traces. Les manifestations du (dé)colonial au musée, Horizons d’attente, Paris, 2023
• Damiana OŢOIU, « Property restitution », in Lavinia STAN, Nadya NEDELSKY (eds), Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press , vol. 1, 2023 (editia a 2a)
• Damiana OŢOIU, « Diaspora(s) », « communautés d’origine » et collections muséales. Collaboration et controverses autour de la rénovation du Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale, à Tervuren in New Europe College Yearbook, 2018-2019, NEC, Bucuresti, 2023, pp. 169-194
• Felicity BODENSTEIN, Damiana OŢOIU, Eva Maria TROELENBERG (ed.), Contested Holdings: Museum Collections in Political, Epistemic and Artistic Processes of Return, New York, Berghahn Books, 2022
• Damiana OŢOIU, « (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 OŢOIU, Eva Maria TROELENBERG (ed.), Contested Holdings: Museum Collections in Political, Epistemic and Artistic Processes of Return, New York, Berghahn Books, 2022, pp. 177-195

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, 11.30 am – 2.20 pm, prior appointment by e-mail required

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