Introduction - The heritage and decoloniality nexus: Global exchanges and unresolved questions in sedimented landscapes of injustice

More than ever, heritage narratives, policies, and objects are being questioned because of the colonial legacies that still permeate public spaces. From the eruption of protests and claims to heritage objects, places, and monuments in former colonial powers to the emergence of Indigenous peoples’ heritage curatorship, land, and resources activism, new efforts are challenging racialized social orders and persistent exclusionary regimes. Protests echo long-running questions about social structure, voice, and ability to shape lives and the future, linking heritage to broader questions of rights, resources, and redistribution. Both academic scholarship and grassroots politics prompt us to interrogate the entrenched politics of representation, socio-material interactions, and unfinished business of decolonizing heritage institutions and practices. This conversation started within the framework of a networking seed grant project promoted by the University of Geneva and the University of Exeter. The project aimed to broaden the conversation on the intersections of cultural heritage, identity, and landscape sustainability by bringing together scholars addressing different configurations of heritage regimes, discourses, and practices from various regions of the world. Focusing on the connections, as well as contradictions, that characterize social spaces caught up between local and global policies and practices, this led to a powerful interdisciplinary and comparative outlook on the complexities of decoloniality.