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PhD Working Title: Re-remembered: the collaborative creation of a digital catalogue
2008 - 2011
This study will take as a basis emergent questions brought about by
political changes (i.e. repatriation) and changes in technology (i.e.
digitisation and the internet), in relationship to material culture as
held in cultural heritage institution collections, to consider what
impact these changes might have in changing visual cannons of
representation.
Working with indigenous communities in the American North East
Woodlands, a corpus of images will be brought together from the British
Museum Pictorial Collection to create a digital catalogue of images; the
mediations involved in this process being the focus of the research.
Interests and Publications:
For the last 20 some years I have been working in various museums in the
United States, Germany and the UK, and my particular interest in
museums is in ethnographic collections, with a specific focus in North
America.
Although I have done a variety of work with a variety of collections,
currently my interest is in photograph collections, correlating with my
interest in material and visual culture in anthropology - having
conceptualised and co-curated a photograph exhibit for the Smithsonian
Institution National Museum of the American Indian in 2002: Booming out:
Mohawk Ironworkers Build New York.
I also have interests in issues of ownership and copyright as well as
cultural transmission and identity work as these issues are manifest in
cultural heritage institutions. Bread, I should mention bread - I have a
particular interest in food anthropology, that had it's beginnings in
my general interest in bread.
Recent publications:
(Title TBC) Essay on the BM Melanesian Photography Collection, B M Publications (2009)
"Touch and the value of object handling: Final conclusions for a new
sensory museology", with B. Lynch, in: Chatterjee, H., Touch in Museums:
Policy and Practice in Object Handling, London: Berg (2008)
"Digital Curation: Theorising Reflexivity"; ICOM/CIDOC 'The Digital
Curation of Cultural Heritage' Conference, Benaki Museum, Athens,
September (2008)
"Defining access: factors and variables", with R. Peters, 22nd
International Inst. for Conservation Congress, London, September (2008);
Published in pre-prints.
"Australia in London; a snapshot of the British Museum's Australian
photographic collection", with A. Clark and E. Herdman, King's College
Seminar, October (2008)
"Diaspora Identities: Jewish Bakeries and Baked Goods in London and
Berlin"; 'Cultures in Transit' Conference, Liverpool Hope University,
July
(2008)
