A selection of talks and writing and stuff
- Forthcoming September 2024: co-authored with Sara Perry, Katrina Foxton and Anna-Maria Sichani, Ethics as Practice: Report on the 1st Discovery Project Ethics Workshop, a TanC report.
- A short reponse entitled “Letting People In, Letting Objects Out: Countering the Dislocations of Collections Management Practice” in Collections Management as Critical Museum Practice , edited by Cara Krmpotich and Alice Stevenson, London, UCL Press.
- Co-authored with Anjalie Dalal-Clayton, “Provisional Semantics: Addressing the Challenges of Representing Multiple Perspectives within Public Collections.” Collections, 26 Feb. 2024.
- Co-authored with Anjalie Dalal-Clayton, Provisional Inclusion: Can collections research projects ever be genuinely ethical and equitable? for the Towards a National Collection Conference 2023: Unlocking the Potential of Digital Collections’, at the British Museum, 26 April 2023
- Presentation with Jon Gillick, Can ‘Words Matter” in Machine Learning? for the Transforming Collections, Rewinding Internationalism conference at Van Abbemuseum, 20-21 April, 2023
- Keynote lecture, with Anjalie Dalal-Clayton, Making the case for slow cataloguing Collections Trust Conference 2022: Rethinking Cataloguing, 6 October 2022
- Who Owns What?: Barriers to access and co-production in UK Digital & Cultural Heritage webinar with JC Niala, Andrea Wallace, Mathilde Pavis, Kelly Foster, Tehmina Goskar, Abira Hussein and Shelley Angelie Saggar, 17 November 2021.
- Provisional S/semantics, projects and positionality: Findings from the TaNC Provisional Semantics project for the ARLIS Cataloguing and Classification Committee ethics series
- Co-authored with Anjalie Dalal-Clayton, Trophies of Empire: modes of acquisition, legitimization and colonial denial in art and heritage interpretation, for the ‘Plunder: An Alternative History of Art’ session at the AAH Conference, London, 6-8 April 2022
- Co-authored with Anjalie Dalal-Clayton, Against a New Orthodoxy: Decolonised “Objectivity” in the Cataloguing and Description of Artworks a featured essay for the Paul Mellon Center Photographic Archive web site, 8 December 2021
- Presentation for the Rethinking cataloguing, classification and digital presence session, at the Rethinking museum practices: decolonizing collections conference, CIDOC, COMCOL and ICOM Brasil, 7 December 2021
- Provisional Semantics: Addressing the challenges of representing multiple perspectives within an evolving digitised national collection, presentation for the Irish Museums Association Decolonising the Catalogues conference, 26 November 2021
- Decolonising the Database presentation for Decolonising the Database event, Centre for Design History, University of Brighton, 5 July 2021
- Discussion panel – Curatorial Mediation with Anjalie Dalal-Clayton, Cheryl Bowen, Charlotte Holmes and Deirdre Osbourn for Exhibiting Embarrassment: Museums, Public Culture and Consequentialist Aesthetics Symposium, 4 June 2021
- Embedding anti-racism in museum documentation practice, presentation for Doing the Work: Documenting Collections, for Contemporary Art Society and the Decolonising Arts Institute, UAL, 24 March 2021
Projects
Transforming Collections : Reimagining Art, Nation and Heritage
The Transforming Collections project (2021-2024) is driven by the belief that a national collection cannot be imagined without addressing structural inequalities in the arts. Research will be carried out by an interdisciplinary team of colleagues from UAL’s Decolonising Arts Institute and UAL Creative Computing Institute working closely with Tate, and a further 15 national and international collection and archive partners. The project is part of the 5 year AHRC funding programme, Towards a National Collection (TANC)
Provisional Semantics: Addressing the challenges of representing multiple perspectives within an evolving digitised national collection
This AHRC/TaNC funded research project (2020-22) led by Tate Research focused on how museums and heritage organisations can engage in decolonising practices to produce search terms, catalogue entries and interpretations fit for purpose for an evolving digitised national collection.
Provisional Semantics was part of Towards a National Collection (TANC), a major programme investing in the UK’s world-renowned museums, archives, libraries and galleries. The programme, led by the Arts and Humanities Research Council with funding provided through UK Research and Innovation’s Strategic Priorities Fund, ‘will take the first steps towards creating a unified virtual “national collection” by dissolving barriers between different collections’.
Project page: https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/projects/provisional-semantics
Critical approaches to museum documentation and the effect of digitisation on object records
I undertook post-graduate research at UCL’s Centre for Digital Humanities between 2014 and 2020. The focus of my research was the online museum object record and the information that it presents. Through a detailed, comparative study of two museum-type collections (the Museum of the Home, and UCL’s Galton Collection), their histories and documentation, I explored the historical, social and technical circumstances that have converged to produce digital records and present object information online in current UK museum practice.
The First Decade, Crafts Council
The First Decade Project (2015) presents objects, documents, interviews and images charting the first ten years of the Crafts Council, the collections and their makers. New material and information was added to give context and depth to understanding of the objects, archives and formative years. You can scroll through the timeline, browse through themed selections or simply search for a maker or object or period to find out more about this rich and exciting period of making and craft development.
https://collections.craftscouncil.org.uk/first-decade
Museum:Data:Laundry 