Despite the remarkable prominence of cultural restitution in both domestic and international politics, the attention of mainstream political and social science has remained comparatively limited. Spanning cases and perspectives from Africa, Europe and North America, the contributions of this Special Issue move beyond merely legalistic and moralistic accounts of restitution debates and instead combine conceptual innovations with empirical analysis. Specifically, we focus on the under-researched political dynamics of return, the symbolic and institutional power of museum collections and knowledge production as well as their contestations. Through nine original research articles, the special issue illuminates the scope and depth of analysing contested objects in cultural restitution through a materiality approach. The contributions identify the debates around these artefacts in which moral redress, authority and historical narrative come together in distinctly political ways. The overall aim of this introduction is to suggest that analysing the politics of objects in cultural restitution should be an interdisciplinary endeavour – yet anchored in political science. Moreover, political science has a lot to gain – methodologically speaking – by integrating material approaches into its canon. Cultural restitution is a uniquely positioned field to show this, especially as the political implications of current restitution dynamics extend – politically speaking – far beyond the mere return of objects.