Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects on what researchers may learn from conducting anti-colonial projects with contested collections in university museums. I argue that uncertainty becomes pedagogically useful, asking researchers to balance political and ethical risks with their accountabilities to these collections

Paper long abstract:

Edinburgh University's Anatomical Museum contains a room with the cranial remains of nearly 1800 people, stolen in the 19th and 20th centuries. Many ancestors are unaffiliated, their identities unknown; their provenance often inconsistent, disorganised and sometimes missing. Although the ancestors and various associated objects such as measuring instruments are no longer used in anatomical teaching, the collection has resurged as a point of academic inquiry for undergraduates, postgraduates, and larger international research teams. These projects seek to reconcile these colonial legacies, often working with inconsistent provenance to reunite ancestors with descendants.

This paper reflects on what anthropologists may learn from initiating 'activist-orientated' research within higher education institutions. What would an ethically-sensitive, proactive, anti-colonial research methodology look like for contested colonial collections? How do researchers produce knowledge in a context where some things (and people) may remain unknowable? How may anthropologists do collaborative work with communities, when ancestors’ identities are missing?

Recognizing their historical and institutional responsibilities, anthropologists must balance various political and ethical risks to reckon with these collections. I argue that working through the uncertainty, hesitancy and ambivalence that surrounds this collection has pedagogical value. I theorise that these uncomfortable situations produce a 'methodology of discomfort' that challenges researchers to examine their accountabilities to this work and to descendants. I show how this methodology delineates the space between ‘learning about’ the collections, and ‘learning from’ them (Britzman 1998: 117), which also asks researchers to consider what they stand to gain from these encounters.