Lennon Mhishi is an anthropologist and interdisciplinary researcher whose work connects African and diasporic music, social life, and creative expression, with a particular interest in the intersections between museums, colonial collections, contemporary art, the afterlives of slavery and colonialism, as well as the contemporary dynamics of exploitation, forced labor, and human rights in African contexts. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (since 2025), following a distinguished trajectory of research and curatorial practice in leading international institutions.
Between 2021 and 2025, he was a researcher at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, as part of the project Reconnecting “Objects”: Epistemic Plurality and Transformative Practices in and Beyond Museums, funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung. This initiative fostered collaborations between Oxford, Cape Town, Dakar, Dschang, and Berlin. Within this framework, he co-curated exhibitions and performances centered on music, sound, and the reconnection of colonial heritage with its source communities.
Prior to that, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool (2017–2021), working within the Antislavery Knowledge Network, where he coordinated community-based strategies to address contemporary forms of exploitation through the arts and heritage. He led creative and intercultural communication projects, including the podcast Creative Paths to Freedom, and participated in public debates on slavery, migration, and racial inequality. He was also a MuseumsLab Fellow (2023) and an Early Career Fellow at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, University of Oxford (2023–2024), where he explored sustainable models of community leadership and institutional transformation in museums