Laibor's dissertation is a historical-ethnographic study of the collection of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. The museum houses, among other things, objects that were brought to Berlin during German colonial rule in German East Africa , now Tanzania, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century following military conflicts with Maasai communities.

The study innovatively combines research approaches from the social and cultural anthropology of material culture, decolonial critique, and the social and cultural studies of affect and emotion in order to expose the Eurocentric assumptions that characterise current restitution debates in European museums - particularly in Germany in the context of the discussions surrounding the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. Laibor shows how his Maasai interlocutors do not see the objects in the collection as 'ethnographic objects' to be scientifically researched and attributed as property to either German or Tanzanian museums. Rather, from an indigenous perspective, they are inseparable parts of the body, in Maa imasaa, which have their own agency and subjectivity. The colonial violence with which they were taken from the Maasai has left its mark on these objects. A special power weighs on them, in the Maa iloikop, which makes both the Maasai and the Germans unhappy - even today, in the present.

Laibor Moko argues that this Maasai perspective leads to a shift in the perception of what and when colonialism is. Instead of focusing on colonialism in the past, which can at best be dealt with, the focus is shifted to the present.

The Ernst Reuter Prize has been awarded annually since 1985 on 4 December, the anniversary of the founding of Freie Universität Berlin, and is sponsored by the Ernst Reuter Society of Friends, Sponsors, and Alumni of Freie Universität Berlin. The prize is awarded to young academics at Freie Universität Berlin for the best dissertations. The dissertations, which are selected by a committee, each receive 10,000.00 euros.