Debbie Onuoha

Visual Anthropologist

For my Open Set LAB project, I will be exploring different approaches to heritage formation in Bijlmer. Based on interviews and conversations with individuals involved in aspects of cultural creation, curation and preservation in Bijlmermeer, I aim to develop a(n audio) documentary about their various attempts to construct and memorialize a past in this once projected ‘City of the Future.’

I am a Ghanaian-Nigerian with a passion for words and moving images. My work lies at the intersection of artistic practice and academic research.

I currently work as a Visual Anthropologist with the Center for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH), in the Institut für Europäische Ethnologie, at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Germany). There, as part of the research group, “Making Differences in Berlin: Transforming Museums and Heritage in the 21^st Century,” my work is focused on filming ghosts, silences and hidden things, in museums, archives and heritage spaces.

I received my MA in Documentary Filmmaking from DocNomads—a mobile film school jointly administered between Universidade Lusófona (Portugal), Színház-és Filmművészeti Egyetem (Hungary) and the LUCA School of Arts (Belgium). I have also been awarded an MPhil in World History by Trinity College, University of Cambridge (UK) and completed my BA in History and Literature, and Anthropology, with a minor/secondary field in Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University (USA).