Vicky Van Bockhaven
Biographic Data
| ID | 227036 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Vicky Van Bockhaven |
| GIVEN NAMES | Vicky |
| FAMILY NAME | Van Bockhaven |
| SIGNATURE | VAN BOCKHAVEN V |
| AFFILIATIONS | Royal Museum for Central Africa |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0534-2934 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 10 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
L’éducation au patrimoine co-créée en Haut-Uélé
This research investigates the co-creation of primary-level heritage education in Haut-Uele, DRC—a region marked by colonial disruption and ongoing epistemicide— drawing upon social pedagogy, socioconstructivist theory, and auto-ethnographic experience. The project brought together teachers, families, elders, and educational authorities through participatory interviews, focus groups, and hands-on workshops, closely involving local actors at every…
How to Make Statues Speak Again?”
This article explores a tension within contemporary museum and cultural policies, focusing on the decolonisation of colonial collections and associated knowledge production. Despite ongoing efforts, these initiatives often remain under the control of Western institutions, leaving the concerned countries and communities unequally involved. This exclusion perpetuates colonial trauma and provokes activism against museums and governments. Based on re…
Augure (2023) a film by Baloji and Augurism curated by Baloji and Elisa De Wyngaert
Augure, the French word for “omen,” points at metaphysical signs foretelling good and bad fortune. The omens in Baloji's work refer to a metaphysically charged worldview, common in Congolese society, which affects how certain people are perceived. The artist's name, as stated on his website, highlights this worldview: in colonial times baloji, a Kiswahili word, referred to a person involved in occult activities, or a sorcerer, but today it mostly…
Les Congolais obtiendront-ils la restitution qu’ils demandent
Ce rapport évalue la politique belge visant à restituer au Congo les objets spoliés du Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale et qui s’appuie sur la recherche de provenance. Si la volonté politique de restituer est un jalon historique, cette approche, avec la restitution comme objectif final, ne tient pas compte des besoins des communautés du patrimoine. Dans le nord-est du Congo, la population exprime un sentiment complexe de perte autour de ce patri…
Revisiting colonial legacies in knowledge production on customary authority in Central and East Africa
Renewed attention on customary authority in both scholarship and development interventions renders it pertinent to revisit how contemporary engagement with this form of authority is still informed by colonial legacies. These legacies include: first, the penchant to see customary authority as solely invested in 'chiefs', rather than being relational and multifaceted; second, compartmentalized approaches that emphasize chiefs' role as political aut…
Aniotoandnebeli
By means of two case studies, this paper demonstrates how customary chiefs in Northeast Congo crafted their power position under colonial indirect rule. The first case discusses chiefs' role in anioto or leopard-men killings to secure their authority over people, land and resources whilst circumventing colonial control. The second case concerns nebeli, a collective therapy characterised by the distribution of a medicine or charm used to protect, …
Decolonising the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium's Second Museum Age
In December 2018, the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren, Belgium, reopened its doors after a renovation project that started nearly 20 years ago. Founded by the infamous King Leopold II, the RMCA contains cultural and natural history collections from Belgium's former colonies of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi, as well as other parts of Africa and beyond. Today, a new 'Welcome pavilion' leads the visitor through a monumental subterrane…
Anioto
In northeast Congo, from c . 1890–1940, ritually-empowered militias of Bali Leopard-men, or anioto , killed people on behalf of local leaders to secure access to land, resources, and people and to keep rivals and subjects in check. Belgian colonial authorities portrayed the actions of anioto as an irrational disturbance, ignoring their political relevance. The contextualized study of colonial-era conflicts based on court hearings, in association …
Leopard-men of the Congo in literature and popular imagination
The Anyoto leopard-men, a society from eastern Congo, operated between approximately 1890 and 1935. Until now the history of the leopard-men has inspired representations of Central Africa as a barbaric and disorderly place, and the idea that a secret association of men attacked innocent people and ate their limbs remains dominant in western culture. Since the early 20th century this image has been rather faithfully perpetuated in colonial ethnogr…
Kongo across the Waters
The catalogue Kongo across the Waters accompanied an exhibition at the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida in 2013, which traveled to three other museums in the US. The Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, joined with the Harn to realize these projects. Complementing the Viva Florida 500 program, celebrating 500 years of European presence in Florida in 2013, the catalogue and the travelling exhibition claim to mark a …
Revisiting colonial legacies in knowledge production on customary authority in Central and East Africa
Renewed attention on customary authority in both scholarship and development interventions renders it pertinent to revisit how contemporary engagement with this form of authority is still informed by colonial legacies. These legacies include: first, the penchant to see customary authority as solely invested in 'chiefs', rather than being relational and multifaceted; second, compartmentalized approaches that emphasize chiefs' role as political aut…
Aniotoandnebeli
By means of two case studies, this paper demonstrates how customary chiefs in Northeast Congo crafted their power position under colonial indirect rule. The first case discusses chiefs' role in anioto or leopard-men killings to secure their authority over people, land and resources whilst circumventing colonial control. The second case concerns nebeli, a collective therapy characterised by the distribution of a medicine or charm used to protect, …
Anioto
In northeast Congo, from c . 1890–1940, ritually-empowered militias of Bali Leopard-men, or anioto , killed people on behalf of local leaders to secure access to land, resources, and people and to keep rivals and subjects in check. Belgian colonial authorities portrayed the actions of anioto as an irrational disturbance, ignoring their political relevance. The contextualized study of colonial-era conflicts based on court hearings, in association …
Leopard-men of the Congo in literature and popular imagination
The Anyoto leopard-men, a society from eastern Congo, operated between approximately 1890 and 1935. Until now the history of the leopard-men has inspired representations of Central Africa as a barbaric and disorderly place, and the idea that a secret association of men attacked innocent people and ate their limbs remains dominant in western culture. Since the early 20th century this image has been rather faithfully perpetuated in colonial ethnogr…
Leopard-men of the Congo in literature and popular imagination
The Anyoto leopard-men, a society from eastern Congo, operated between approximately 1890 and 1935. Until now the history of the leopard-men has inspired representations of Central Africa as a barbaric and disorderly place, and the idea that a secret association of men attacked innocent people and ate their limbs remains dominant in western culture. Since the early 20th century this image has been rather faithfully perpetuated in colonial ethnogr…
Kongo across the Waters
The catalogue Kongo across the Waters accompanied an exhibition at the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida in 2013, which traveled to three other museums in the US. The Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, joined with the Harn to realize these projects. Complementing the Viva Florida 500 program, celebrating 500 years of European presence in Florida in 2013, the catalogue and the travelling exhibition claim to mark a …
Anioto
In northeast Congo, from c . 1890–1940, ritually-empowered militias of Bali Leopard-men, or anioto , killed people on behalf of local leaders to secure access to land, resources, and people and to keep rivals and subjects in check. Belgian colonial authorities portrayed the actions of anioto as an irrational disturbance, ignoring their political relevance. The contextualized study of colonial-era conflicts based on court hearings, in association …
Decolonising the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium's Second Museum Age
In December 2018, the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren, Belgium, reopened its doors after a renovation project that started nearly 20 years ago. Founded by the infamous King Leopold II, the RMCA contains cultural and natural history collections from Belgium's former colonies of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi, as well as other parts of Africa and beyond. Today, a new 'Welcome pavilion' leads the visitor through a monumental subterrane…
Revisiting colonial legacies in knowledge production on customary authority in Central and East Africa
Renewed attention on customary authority in both scholarship and development interventions renders it pertinent to revisit how contemporary engagement with this form of authority is still informed by colonial legacies. These legacies include: first, the penchant to see customary authority as solely invested in 'chiefs', rather than being relational and multifaceted; second, compartmentalized approaches that emphasize chiefs' role as political aut…
Aniotoandnebeli
By means of two case studies, this paper demonstrates how customary chiefs in Northeast Congo crafted their power position under colonial indirect rule. The first case discusses chiefs' role in anioto or leopard-men killings to secure their authority over people, land and resources whilst circumventing colonial control. The second case concerns nebeli, a collective therapy characterised by the distribution of a medicine or charm used to protect, …
Les Congolais obtiendront-ils la restitution qu’ils demandent
Ce rapport évalue la politique belge visant à restituer au Congo les objets spoliés du Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale et qui s’appuie sur la recherche de provenance. Si la volonté politique de restituer est un jalon historique, cette approche, avec la restitution comme objectif final, ne tient pas compte des besoins des communautés du patrimoine. Dans le nord-est du Congo, la population exprime un sentiment complexe de perte autour de ce patri…
Augure (2023) a film by Baloji and Augurism curated by Baloji and Elisa De Wyngaert
Augure, the French word for “omen,” points at metaphysical signs foretelling good and bad fortune. The omens in Baloji's work refer to a metaphysically charged worldview, common in Congolese society, which affects how certain people are perceived. The artist's name, as stated on his website, highlights this worldview: in colonial times baloji, a Kiswahili word, referred to a person involved in occult activities, or a sorcerer, but today it mostly…
L’éducation au patrimoine co-créée en Haut-Uélé
This research investigates the co-creation of primary-level heritage education in Haut-Uele, DRC—a region marked by colonial disruption and ongoing epistemicide— drawing upon social pedagogy, socioconstructivist theory, and auto-ethnographic experience. The project brought together teachers, families, elders, and educational authorities through participatory interviews, focus groups, and hands-on workshops, closely involving local actors at every…
How to Make Statues Speak Again?”
This article explores a tension within contemporary museum and cultural policies, focusing on the decolonisation of colonial collections and associated knowledge production. Despite ongoing efforts, these initiatives often remain under the control of Western institutions, leaving the concerned countries and communities unequally involved. This exclusion perpetuates colonial trauma and provokes activism against museums and governments. Based on re…
Colonialism (7 works) · Political science (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · African history and culture studies (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · African Studies and Ethnography (3 works) · Anthropology (3 works) · Art (3 works)