Queer Cultural Belongings - Queer Stories of Africa and the Diaspora

The Digital Queer Archive is a project that explores how colonial and missionary history shaped ideas of gender in African contexts. It highlights that African societies have always known gender identities beyond man and woman. Queerness is not new, nor Western. Through cultural belongings/objects, art, media, and stories the archive shows long histories of queer, non-binary, trans*, inter*, and feminist /womanist expressions.

It connects precolonial histories with today’s LGBTQl+ lives, opening space for decolonial, queer futures and ask what does „queer“ means in Africa beyond the Western ideas? The archive is collaborative, collective, and process-based. It understands itself as a living collection of voices.

Contributions may focus on a museum artefact and its queer history, or any object/cultural belonging, image, or video, that can be included in the digital archive.

The team supports you in turning text, audio, visual, or mixed material into an archive entry. Submissions may include short essays, object analyses, artistic responses, interviews, or multimodal pieces.
Contributors can be based anywhere and should reflect on their positionality and limits of knowledge.

Who can participate?
Cultural experts, artists, researchers, heritage communities, organizations, museums, activists, and others are welcome.
Contributions may address queer histories or contemporary trans and queer life in the continent and diaspora, engaging themes such as remembrance, community, ancestry, visibility, healing, spirituality, healthcare, body politics, social inequalities ...

Please submit

• a short outline (150-300 words)
• a brief bio (50-100 words)

Ideas can be rough, we are happy to brainstorm together. Contributors will also have opportunities to meet and exchange with each other. Anonymous contributions are welcome.
A one-time honorarium of 600 Euro for the final contribution will be offered once accepted.

Submit to: afrqueerarchives@proton.me

Application of idea: 19 Febr. 2026
Response: 28 Febr. 2026
Final Submission: Sept. 2026

Archive launch: Dec. 2026. It is a collaborate with perfocraZe International Artist Residency (Kumasi), the Botswana National Museum (Gaborone), the University of Bremen, MARKK (Hamburg), Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford), and AfricaMuseum (Tervuren).This project is part of TheMuseumsLab CollabFund, funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation

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