Log in to star items.
- Convenors:
-
Helen Cornish
(University of Hertfordshire)
Veronica Ferreri (Ca' Foscari University)
Katarzyna Puzon (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussants:
-
Thomas Fearon
(Goldsmiths, University of London)
Theodoros Rakopoulos (University of Oslo)
Carna Brkovic (University of Mainz)
Alice Millar (UCL)
Izabella Goldstein
- Formats:
- Roundtable
- Networks:
- Network Panel
Short Abstract
How can anthropologists participate in public and collaborative approaches to history and heritage? We invite contributions that challenge polarised interpretations and representations of the past and imagine collective futures beyond the impasses of the present.
Long Abstract
This roundtable invites anthropologists to explore how collaborative approaches to ‘making things public’ can contribute to developing critical discussions around interpretations, representations and usage of the past in the public domain. From museums to zines, from city tours to video installations, anthropologists have increasingly engaged in new forms of collaborations with activists, public institutions, artists and citizens’ organisations. These collaborations have been pivotal in reimagining our fraught present and in redefining what anthropology is and what it might be good for. This reimagination has contributed to a radical rethinking of the role of history in public domains beyond mere narration. Yet this rethinking is entangled with profound polarisations as certain histories and their material and immaterial renderings are preserved, curated, or restituted, while others are erased, marginalized and silenced— raising urgent questions around the problem of history and the use of heritage.
Thinking through the broader dynamics of restitution, silencing, curating and resurfacing, we ask how the past is grounded in material, institutional, and theoretical practices as well as political realities—and where we might identify tensions, fractures, and gaps, even within heritage arenas themselves. By attending to the interconnections that shape how heritage is produced, curated, and interpreted, and by troubling dominant chronologies and categories of historical knowledge, anthropological approaches can challenge the hardened polarizations that currently shape debates about who owns the past. What new possibilities emerge when anthropologists work across disciplinary boundaries, institutional contexts and different medium? How do anthropologists work with historians, heritage institutions, citizens’ organisations and activists? How might such collaborations help us imagine collective futures beyond the impasses of the present and with it rethink anthropology as well as public history and heritage as intellectual, political and public endeavours?
Accepted contributions
Session 1Contribution short abstract
This contribution explores singing-the-archive as a way of making marginalised pasts public. Drawing on my performances of Yiddish songs of the Jewish urban poor, I examine how voice, affect, and public engagement challenge silencing, reshape heritage, and reimagine anthropology’s role.
Contribution long abstract
This contribution reflects on singing-the-archive as a performative method of making marginalised pasts public. Drawing on ethnomusicological research into Yiddish songs of the Jewish urban poor, I explore how singing archival material can function simultaneously as a research practice, public engagement, and ethical intervention. The songs - documenting the lives of thieves, beggars, and especially women subjected to poverty, exploitation, and sex trafficking - were historically marginalised both at the moment of their creation and later through archival silencing and selective heritage-making.
By taking these songs out of the archive and into concerts, workshops, and recordings, I examine how performance becomes a site of collaboration between researcher, historical voices, contemporary audiences and cultural institutions. This process does not aim at historical reconstruction but at relational reactivation: allowing suppressed narratives to circulate anew, embodied through voice, affect, and listening. Singing operates here as a medium that troubles dominant chronologies and sanitized representations of Jewish history, challenging the primacy of elite, male, and heroic pasts in public memory.
The paper situates singing-the-archive at the intersection of applied ethnomusicology, autoethnography, and public anthropology, asking what kinds of knowledge emerge when researchers work across disciplinary boundaries and beyond conventional academic outputs. It also raises questions about restitution and responsibility: what does it mean to “give back” when the original communities are no longer present, and how can collaborations with present-day publics create spaces for ethical remembrance rather than appropriation?
Contribution short abstract
This paper argues that, in a politically polarised world, heritage work has shifted from being for publics to being also in public. Engaging with heritage practices in public view should be understood as a core anthropological intervention in debates over history, heritage and collective futures.
Contribution long abstract
Populist and polarizing politics have become a central concern for museums and heritage staff as debates about what and for whom “heritage” is. Drawing on ethnographic research with museum and heritage professionals working in our fraught cultural moment, this paper examines how far-right, populist politics shape institutional practices, producing fear, self-censorship and loss of confidence among staff, alongside solidarity and collaboration.
I explore how collaborative forms of support help museums and heritage sites tell “difficult” or ostensibly controversial hi/stories despite anxieties about public backlash, particularly in relation to social media exposure. I argue that social media and the so-called “call out” culture therein have shifted heritage work from being work for publics to be work in public, where peers and publics can ask questions, recognise and critique the work of practitioners. Placing the specific case of the Migration Network (an output of the Migration Museum, UK) in dialogue with other publicly visible initiatives, including Fair Museum Jobs, Museum as Muck and The Shittish Museum, I argue that working in public, as well as for publics, is a crucial practice for confronting polarisation within heritage arenas.
Finally, I consider what anthropology stands to gain from such public-facing collaborations, suggesting that calling out, supporting and challenging heritage practices in public view should be understood as a core anthropological intervention in debates over history, heritage and collective futures.