In this post, history researcher Dario Willi takes us back to a catalytic moment in the art restitution movement, when the Ghanaian filmmaker Nii Kwate Owoo publicised the innumerable artworks and artefacts languishing in the British Museum, after their removal from source communities in a context of colonial domination.

Catalonia’s merchants and towns profited hugely from the transatlantic slave trade after it was banned in the nineteenth century, as history researcher Adrià Enríquez Àlvaro documents. The good news is the recent movements to critique and reverse official amnesia, regarding public history and monuments.

Initially the COVID-19 crisis appeared to put a halt to street protests and other forms of citizen engagement in Europe. But the pandemic has also increased the value of solidarity, motivating involvement on behalf of people at risk. EUI research fellow Ioana-Elena Oana and colleagues have explored the ways in which perceived threats and ideological predispositions have shaped how and when people mobilise.

Progressive taxes could be one positive outcome of Covid-19, as people demand fiscal fairness following a crisis. SPS researcher Jakob Frizell explores the parallels with war-time fiscal politics and the constraints on governments today to meet such demands. Taxing the rich, he concludes, is still the wise choice.

In a recent report, researchers from the BRaVE project examine the causes driving social polarisation in the global north. Their work aims to provide guidance on creating the political, social and economic conditions that foster community resilience to the cleavages of our day.

Historian Tom Junes highlights the often eclipsed generational dimension of the protests that brought sweeping transformation to Eastern Europe in the late 1980s.