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

• 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

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

Current Projects

• Core participant in AHRC-funded Museum Ethics Research Network.
• British Museum Room 3 exhibition - collaboration with the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas.
• 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. & 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. 'Material Culture: Ancestries and Trajectories in Material Culture Studies' in J. G. Carrier and D. B. Gewertz (eds), Handbook of Sociocultural Anthropology, Oxford: Berg, forthcoming 2012.
• 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, forthcoming 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 and Narrative, Oxford: Berghahn (EASA series), forthcoming 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 Imaginations 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.
• 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 Marilena Alivizatou)
• 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: Postcolonial photography and heritage perceptions (principal supervisor Beverley Butler)
• Johanna Zetterstrom-Sharp Cultural heritage, digital curatorship, and civil society strengthening in post-conflict Sierra Leone’ (second supervisor Beverley Butler)

Recent Students

• John Manley The material culture of Roman colonisation: Anthropological approaches to archaeological interpretation (awarded 2011)