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- Convenors:
-
Claire Wintle
(University of Brighton/Museum Ethnographers Group)
Chris Wingfield (University of East Anglia)
- Formats:
- Panels
- Location:
- BP Lecture Theatre
- Start time:
- 8 June, 2012 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This roundtable workshop, sponsored by the Museum Ethnographers Group with the support of Arts Council England, brings together anthropologists and museum practitioners to discuss museums as a major interface between anthropology and the world. The audience will be invited to debate the changing relationship between museums and anthropology and the role of anthropology in museums today.
Long Abstract:
Workshop convened by Claire Wintle, Chris Wingfield and Claire Warrior on behalf of the Museum Ethnographers Group
Famously described as 'the institutional homeland of anthropology', the museum has been seen as a key site for anthropology, and a major interface between anthropology and the world. But the relationship between anthropology and museums is rich and complex, both historically and today. The discipline emerged and flourished amid the West's storehouses of material culture, nourished by Bastian, Tylor, Haddon and others who considered collections of material culture to be fundamental to the fledgling subject. Despite a twentieth-century shift in anthropology away from the museum and into the field, today the two are again closely entwined, and the museum is itself now the focus of anthropologists as a key area of study.
This workshop will bring together a number of eminent anthropologists and museum practitioners to discuss this changing relationship and the role of anthropology in museum practice today. Following short presentations from each of the panel, the audience will be invited to debate key issues such as: the importance of the museum in disseminating anthropological research; how practices of display and collecting shift in relation to approaches in anthropology; how anthropology has been moulded through its contact with other disciplines in the museum; the relationship between reflexive anthropology and museology, and the potential futures of these complex liaisons.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paul Basu (University of Oxford)
Paper short abstract:
Paul Basu is Reader in Material Culture and Museum Studies at University College London. He is currently working on a book on cultural heritage and national consciousness in Sierra Leone, and editing, with Wayne Modest, a volume concerned with museums, heritage and international development.
Elizabeth Edwards (De Montfort University)
Paper short abstract:
Elizabeth Edwards is Professor and Director of the Photographic History Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester. A former curator, she has worked extensively on the relationship between photography, anthropology and history and on museum engagements with photographs.
Sharon Macdonald (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Paper short abstract:
Sharon Macdonald is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester and from September 2012 will become Anniversary Professor of Cultural Anthropology in the Department of Sociology at the University of York. She has conducted research in the UK, Germany, and most recently in China.
Anita Herle (University of Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
Dr Herle is the Senior Curator for Anthropology at the Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology (MAA) at the University of Cambridge. She also coordinates an MPhil course in Anthropology & Museums in the Division of Social Anthropology at Cambridge. Her research focuses on the Museum's collections.
Claire Warrior (National Maritime Museum)
Paper short abstract:
Claire Warrior is Senior Exhibitions Curator at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. She is also an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Student with the University of Cambridge. Her PhD research concerns the ways in which museums have shaped interpretations of Polar collections.
Claire Wintle (University of Brighton/Museum Ethnographers Group)
Paper short abstract:
Claire Wintle is the secretary of the Museum Ethnographers Group and a Lecturer in the History of Art and Design at the University of Brighton. Her book, 'Colonial Collecting and Display: Encounters through Material Culture in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands' is forthcoming from Berghahn.
Chris Wingfield (University of East Anglia)
Paper short abstract:
Chris Wingfield has worked as a researcher at the Pitt Rivers Museum and a Curator at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. He is also the web officer and former treasurer of the Museum Ethnographers Group.