UCL Institute of Archaeology

• MSc, PhD
• Reader in Material Culture and Museum Studies
• Section Co-ordinator: Heritage Studies
• Degree Programme Co-ordinator: MA Museum Studies
• Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Department of Anthropology
• Managing Editor, Journal of Material Culture
• Series Editor, Routledge Studies in Culture and Development
  

Research Interests

• Anthropological perspectives on cultural heritage and memory
• Anthropology and archaeology of landscape
• Spatial history, spatial practice, ‘sites of memory’
• Museum anthropology, history of ethnographic collecting and display
• Exhibition practice, visual anthropology, multimedia installation
• Museums and development, cultural heritage and civil society strengthening
• Colonial and postcolonial heritage ideology and legislation
• Material culture and migration, homelands and the diasporic imagination
• Regional expertise: West Africa (especially Sierra Leone), Scotland and the Scottish diaspora

Research Directory Records

• Centre for Museums, Heritage and Material Culture Studies
• I-Treasures
  
• Reanimating Cultural Heritage
• Palimpsest Memoryscapes

Current Projects

• Co-Investigator, AHRC-funded 'Utopian Archives: Excavating Pasts for Postcolonial Futures' Research Network.
• Core participant, AHRC-funded 'Museum Ethics' Research Network.
• Curator, Sowei mask: spirit of Sierra Leone - Asahi Shimbun Objects in Focus display at the British Museum. Collaboration with the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. Exhibition and associated events programme, 14 February to 28 April 2013.
• Palimpsest Memoryscapes - a book project exploring the multiple 'regimes of memory' that coexist in the Sierra Leonean cultural landscape.
• Critical Conversations in Culture and Development workshop series - collaboration with the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam (the first workshop, Museums, Heritage and International Development, took place at the Tropenmuseum in September 2011).
• Reanimating Cultural Heritage: digital repatriation, knowledge networks and civil society strengthening in post-conflict Sierra Leone – 3 year project funded under the AHRC’s Beyond Text programme. Partners include the British Museum, British Library Sound Archive, Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, Glasgow Museums, World Museum Liverpool, the National Museum of Sierra Leone, and University of Sussex Informatics Department. A major output of the project is the digital heritage resource www.sierraleoneheritage.org.
• British Museum Africa Programme - lead consultant on capacity building at Sierra Leone National Museum since 2007.
• Object Diasporas, Resourcing Communities – British Academy funded survey of Sierra Leonean collections in the global museumscape.
• Heritage Laws, Colonial Legacies – comparative history and study of heritage legislation in British Commonwealth states.
• Discovering Anthropology through Museum Collections – museum learning resource, partners include Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, C-SAP, the Royal Anthropological Institute, and University of Sussex Anthropology Department.

Educational Background

• MSc: Social Anthropology, University College London
• PhD: Anthropology, University College London

Books & Edited Collections

• Basu, P. & Modest, W. (eds) Museums, Heritage and International Development, New York: Routledge, forthcoming 2013.
• Basu, P. & Coleman, S. (eds) Pathways to Anthropology, special issue of Anthropology in Action 17(2/3), 2010.
• Basu, P. & Coleman, S. (eds) Migrant Worlds, Material Cultures, special issue of Mobilities 3(3), 2008.
• Basu, P. Highland Homecomings: Genealogy and Heritage-Tourism in the Scottish Diaspora, London: Routledge, 2007.
• Basu, P. & Macdonald, S. (eds) Exhibition Experiments, Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.
• Basu, P. et al. Land Lines: An Illustrated Journey through the Landscape and Literature of Scotland, Edinburgh: Polygon, 2001 (photography).

Articles & Book Chapters

• Basu, P. 'Reanimating Cultural Heritage: Digital Curatorship, Knowledge Networks and Social Transformation in Sierra Leone' in A. Coombes & R. Phillips (eds), Museum Transformations, Oxford: Blackwell (International Handbooks of Museum Studies series), forthcoming 2013.
• Basu, P. 'Communicating Anthropology' in S. Coleman, S. Hyatt & A. Kingsolver (eds), Routledge Companion to Contemporary Anthropology, New York: Routledge, forthcoming 2013.
• Basu, P. 'Recasting the National Narrative: Postcolonial Pastiche and the new Sierra Leone Peace and Cultural Monument', African Arts 46(3): 10-25, forthcoming 2013.
• Basu, P. 'Memoryscapes and Multi-Sited Methods: Researching Cultural Memory in Sierra Leone' in E. Keightley & M. Pickering (eds) Research Methods for Memory Studies, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming 2013.
• Basu, P. 'Material Culture: Ancestries and Trajectories in Material Culture Studies' in J. G. Carrier and D. B. Gewertz (eds), Handbook of Sociocultural Anthropology, London: Bloomsbury, 2013.
• Basu, P. 'A Museum for Sierra Leone? Amateur Enthusiasms and Colonial Museum Policy in British West Africa' in S. Longair & J. McAleer (eds), Curating Empire: Museums and the British Imperial Experience, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012.
• Basu, P. 'Cairns in the Landscape: Migrant Stones and Migrant Stories in Scotland and its Diaspora' in A. Arnason et al (eds), Landscapes Beyond Land: Routes, Aesthetics, Narratives, Oxford: Berghahn (EASA series), 2012.
• Basu, P. 'Object Diasporas, Resourcing Communities: Sierra Leonean Collections in the Global Museumscape', Museum Anthropology 34(1): 28-42, 2011.
• Basu, P. & Coleman, S. 'Pathways to Anthropology', Anthropology in Action 17(2/3): 1-7, 2010.
• Basu, P. & Coleman, S. 'Culture, Identity, Difference: Developing a Museum-based Anthropology Education Resource for Pre-university Students', Anthropology in Action 17(2/3): 87-104, 2010.
• Basu, P. & Coleman, S. 'Migrant Worlds, Material Cultures', Mobilities 3(3): 313-330, 2008.
• Basu, P. 'Confronting the Past? Negotiating a Heritage of Conflict in Sierra Leone', Journal of Material Culture 13(2): 153-167, 2008.
• Basu, P. 'Reframing Ethnographic Film' in T. Austin & W. de Jong (eds), Rethinking Documentary, Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2008.
• Basu, P. 'Palimpsest Memoryscapes: Materializing and Mediating War and Peace in Sierra Leone' in F. de Jong & M. Rowlands (eds), Reclaiming Heritage: Alternative Imaginaries of Memory in West Africa, Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2007.
• Basu, P. 'The Labyrinthine Aesthetic in Contemporary Museum Design' in S. Macdonald & P. Basu (eds), Exhibition Experiments, Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.
• Basu, P. & Macdonald, S. 'Experiments in Exhibition, Ethnography, Art and Science' in S. Macdonald & P. Basu (eds), Exhibition Experiments, Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.
• Basu, P., Coleman, S. & Posey, S. 'Rediscovering Anthropology Through Public Museums', Anthropology News 47(9):16, 2006.
• Basu, P. 'Pilgrims to the Far Country: North American Roots-Tourists in the Scottish Highlands and Islands' in C. Ray (ed.), Transatlantic Scots, Tuscaloosa: Alabama University Press, 2005.
• Basu, P. 'Roots-Tourism as Return Movement: Semantics and the Scottish Diaspora' in M. Harper (ed.), Emigrant Homecomings: The Return Movement of Emigrants, 1600-2000, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005.
• Basu, P. 'Macpherson Country: Genealogical Identities, Spatial Histories and the Scottish Diasporic Clanscape', Cultural Geographies 12(2):123-150, 2005.
• Basu, P. 'Museum, Landscape and the Storytelling Space Between', Landscape and Arts 34/35:2-6, 2005. (Republished in Estonian as 'Muuseum, Maastik ja Lugude Jutustamise Ruum Nende Vahel', Muuseum 31(1): 5-11, 2012)
• Basu, P. 'Route Metaphors of Roots-Tourism in the Scottish Diaspora' in S. Coleman & J. Eade (eds), Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion, London: Routledge, 2004.
• Basu, P. 'My Own Island Home: The Orkney Homecoming', Journal of Material Culture 9(1):27-42, 2004.
• Basu, P. 'Museum/Landscape : Landscape/Museum: Exploring the Boundaries in Dunbeath' in E. Carver & O. Lelong (eds), Modern Views - Ancient Lands: New Work and Thought on Cultural Landscapes, Oxford: BAR British series 377, 2004.
• Basu, P. 'Hunting Down Home: Reflections on Homeland and the Search for Identity in the Scottish Diaspora' in B. Bender & M. Winer (eds), Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile and Place, Oxford: Berg, 2001.
• Basu, P. 'Sites of Memory - Sources of Identity: Landscape-Narratives of the Sutherland Clearances' in J.A. Atkinson, I. Banks & G. MacGregor (eds), Townships to Farmsteads: Rural Settlement Studies in Scotland, England and Wales, Oxford: BAR British series 293, 2000.

Other

• Basu, P. et al. ‘Culture, Identity, Difference: Discovering Anthropology through Museum Collections’, Brighton: Royal Pavilion & Museums, 2009 (museum learning resource)
• Basu, P. 'Narratives in a Landscape: Monuments and Memories of the Sutherland Clearances', MSc dissertation, University College London, 1997.

Current Students

• Emma Ayling Participation, locality, belonging: Rethinking museum communities and community museums (second supervisor Rodney Harrison)
• Jennifer Donato Mobilizing objects, mobilizing people: Visual productions of a nation and the construction of Fijian identity at the Fiji Museum (second supervisors Sue Hamilton, Allen Abramson)
• Julie Shackelford (Anthropology) Beyond 'heritage': Negotiating value in the Badia (co-supervisor Daniel Miller)
• Colin Sterling In culture's shadows: The role of photography in the social construction of heritage sites (principal supervisor Beverley Butler)
• Constance Wyndham The politics of heritage reconstruction in post-conflict Afghanistan (second supervisor Rodney Harrison)

Recent Students

• Dr John Manley The material culture of Roman colonisation: Anthropological approaches to archaeological interpretation (awarded 2011)
• Dr Johanna Zetterstrom-Sharp Encounters of culture, heritage and development in Sierra Leone (awarded 2013)