Situating universalisms. The transnational construction of Homo sapiens in the XX century 

Rome, Ecole française de Rome, 22-24 June 2026 
MSCA postdoctoral fellowship (Maastricht University and École française de Rome) & CNRS (Larhra, Lyon)

What we shall tentatively term the 'Homos sapiens paradigm' emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War as a means of ensuring the sustainability of the restored peace. The 1950 UNESCO Statement on Race and its subsequent, numerous reformulations rested on two key universalist characteristics of the international organisation: the common origin of all human beings in Homo sapiens; and the idea of science as a universal way of knowing. This workshop aims to discuss the transnational construction of this paradigm, as well as the scientific and cultural artefacts that helped establish it from the 1920s onwards. To this end, we will examine the involvement of scientists both within their national scientific contexts, and in international scientific networks and programmes.

PROGRAMME

► Monday 22 June  

Salle des conferences

2:30 pm welcome Albane Cogné (Head of the Modern and Contemporary Periods Section, EFR)

2:40 pm Opening remark Maddalena Cataldi

The ancestors of the ‘new man’ and the building of the Third Rome

Chair: Luc Berlivet (CNRS - Cermes3)

3:00 pm Stefano Cavazza (University Bologna)
A People of Believers: Folklorists and Religiosity during Fascism

3:30 pm Maddalena Cataldi (MSCA postdoctoral fellow/CNRS)
Fascist Prehistory: Nationalist and Internationalist dimensions of the human origin researches in the making of the fascist capital

4:00 pm Valentina Bartalesi (Biblioteca Hertziana)
Regimes of visibility: notes on the display of prehistoric Art under fascism

4:30 pm Discussion

5:00 pm Coffee break

6:00 pm KEYNOTE Geert Somsen (Maastricht University)
Homo Sapiens’ Pedigree: a History of Universalisms

► Tuesday 23 June

Objects and the reparation of the colonial past: historical prospectives

Chair: Adéle Chevalier (CNRS - Centre Alexandre-Koyré)

9:00 am Gani Jaelani (Universitas Padjadjaran/ Utrecht University)
Out of Nusantara, Out of Mind: The Political Afterlife of Java Man in Contemporary Indonesia

9:30 am Carl-Gösta Ojala (Uppsala University)
Colonial Collecting and Homecoming in Sápmi: Histories of Collecting and Repatriation in the Nordic Countries

10:00 am Discussion

10:30 am Coffee break

11:00 am KEYNOTE Mirjam Brusius (Professor of Global Heritage, History and Memory, University of Cologne)
The Architecture of Absence: Colonial Race Science, Entangled Histories, and the Division of German Memory

The origins of mankind between history of Africa and world prehistory: Pan-Africanism

Chair: Andrea Brazzoduro (Università di Napoli, l’Orientale)

1:30 pm Amzat Boukari-Yabana (PhD, Independent Researcher in African History and Civilizations)
Decolonization and the Periodization of Pan-African History

2:00 pm Géraldine Delley, (Laténium, Université de Neuchâtel)
Dating the past at home : scientific autonomy and the C14 laboratory project in Dakar

2:30 pm Discussion

3:00 pm Visit of Museo delle Civiltà accompanied by Myriam Pierri (Archaeologist officer and Curator of the Iron Age collections, Head of the historical and photographic archives)

► Wednesday 24 June

The origins of mankind between history of Africa and world prehistory: UNESCO

Chair: Geert Somsen (Maastricht University)

9:00 am Saul Dubow (Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History, University of Cambridge)
Human Diversity or the Unity of Humankind? From the 1947 Pan-African Congress to the Unesco Statements on Race, 1950-67

9:30 am Larissa Schulte Nordholt (Leiden University)
African Historicity and UNESCO’s General History of Africa

10:00 am William Carruthers (University of Essex)
Humanity Unsettled: UNESCO, Nubia, and the Persistence of Race

10:30 am Discussion

11:00 am Coffee break

11:30 am Discussion