Nubian studies have long been led by ethnologists and archaeologists interested in exploring questions related to ethnicity and material heritage. These studies flourished during the sixties as UNESCO embarked on the Nubia campaign, while anthropologists from all over the world travelled to document Nubians’ culture before their forced displacement after the construction of the High Dam in Egypt. These foreign explorations had significant implications on the community and its languages and traditions. The literature on Nubia is written mostly in English by non-Nubian scholars. These studies offer interesting academic archives where analysis intersects with memory-work. Nevertheless, these studies tend to objectify Nubian populations, homogenize them, and gloss over different forms of Nubian oral history and heritage-work.  Studies have seldom been presented from a Nubian perspective, and those who presented a narrative of solidarity have been focusing on material loss, overlooking Nubians and their agency, who recognized pain and mourning as work of reclaim. Academic production in the 20 th century had the common trait of invisibilizing Nubian agency, as the texts hinder the affective dimensions of the displacement, resettlement, and their afterlives. In this paper, we argue that an emotional analysis of Nubian performances of culture and community is a starting point to decolonize memory and heritage studies. To this aim, this paper will examine the role of “emotional capital” in establishing Nubian heritage-work and different forms of storytelling of the submerged past. It will adopt a critical sociological standpoint seeking to study emotions without essentializing populations and communities. Following critical heritage studies, this paper will also explore how nostalgia and the affective relationship to the past help us understand the emergence of different memorial practices by Nubian Youth born and raised in Egyptian cities.