Tuesday 4 — Wednesday 5 November 2014

A Two-Day Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Conference hosted by the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, in partnership with Migration Museum Project

This conference seeks to explore the notion of museums as living organisms and the multiple questions that emerge from this context.  Museums, like living beings, do not live in isolation, rather, they are embedded in complex eco systems. Museums are occupied and given life by people. They are constantly evolving, directly affected by the changes around them, as well as effecting and acting as catalysts for change. Museums Alive! — Exploring how museums behave like living beings, organized in partnership with Migration Museum Project, will be the sixth conference developed by the PhD community at the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, and follows last year's highly successful Museum Metamorphosis conference.

AIMS AND TOPICS

We aim to discuss and share ideas on some of the most seminal issues in museums today.  Papers addressing the following themes and questions are encouraged, but we also welcome new suggestions and creative proposals:

Conscious Living

· How do museums form their identity both internally and externally?

·  How do museums facilitate the creation of identities, and how in turn are museums’ identities created by the communities they serve?

· How might we define living in the context of the museum?

· Should museums remain neutral or express emotions?

Open System · How do museums as ‘organisms’ coexist and relate to the wider eco system? How do we define what that system is? · How do museums migrate in order to adapt to the environment, not only in ways of living but also in ways of thinking? · How do museums affect the world around them? ·  How do museums behave in reaction to perceived threats and/or opportunities of change?

Organic Evolution
· How are museums born and do museums get sick or die? Do they mutate? How can we portray a museum’s life cycles?
· How can museums use bodily ‘senses’ to respond to, capture and integrate with their visitors and the public?
· How do museums collaborate and compete with different types of ‘species’?
· How can museums become laboratories or spaces for experimentation?
· How can museums become adaptive within in a defined structure? How and  why do museums evolve?

WHO CAN PARTICIPATE?

The conference team welcomes all postgraduate students, early career researchers and practitioners who are interested in and researching topics related to the museum field. All disciplines and nationalities are invited to participate.

FORMAT AND STYLE OF PRESENTATIONS

We welcome and encourage creative and alternative presentational styles, alongside the traditional paper. Workshops, panel debates, creative writing, films, installations, visual creations, displays and ignite presentations will all be considered.

· Presenters of traditional papers will have 20 minutes to deliver their paper (ending with a 30 minutes Q & A with the whole session panel).

· Workshops, panel debates and other alternative formats can either last 30, 45 or 60 minutes (please specify on submission proposal).

· This year we are also inviting proposals for ignite rapid fire presentations, a great opportunity to spend 5 minutes presenting about a particular project, area of work or piece of research.

ABSTRACTS AND SESSION SUBMISSIONS

Abstracts and session submissions should include the following information:

1)     title of abstract or session

2)     author(s)' name and contact information (including twitter handle)

3)     biography (max. 100 words)

4)     format and style of presentation

5)     abstract or session description of no more than 250 words

6)     optional: up to two jpeg images, each under 2MB, to complement your proposal

Abstracts should be sent by email to Sipei Lu, Conference Secretary, by midnight GMT on 20 June 2014, to msphdconf@gmail.com.msphdconf@gmail.com

Successful participants will be notified by mid July 2014.

COST AND PAYMENT

	Student	Practitioner
Early bird fee (until 31 August)	£45	£55
Full fee (after 1 September)	£65	£75

Lunch and refreshments will be provided on both days. In addition, there will be optional social events and museum visits.

FURTHER INFORMATION

http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/museumstudies/museums-alive

Conference email: msphdconf@gmail.com

Conference blog: http://msphdconf.blogspot.co.uk/

Facebook: goo.gl/a2mjQ4   

Twitter: @msphdconf

Behind the Scenes at the Horniman - Life in the Kalahari Desert

Hugh Brody, Thursday 1st May 2014. 7pm-8pm. Horniman Museum.

Anthropologist, film-maker and activist Hugh Brody has worked for over a decade with the San people of the Kalahari Desert. At this new Behind the Scenes event, Hugh will guide us through ideas of homeland and the realities of land claims using the Horniman’s wonderful collection of San objects. Hugh will preview some of his most recent filmmaking and let us in on his latest discoveries made alongside the Khomani San. For full details about this event visit the Horniman Museum website. 

Call for expressions of interest ­seminars or events with a focus on anthropology in action

Anthropology in Action has a small sum of money saved which we would like to use to support events and activities relevant to our aims. If you are interested in organizing a relevant event or seminar, please contact us with an outline proposal. We encourage you to think creatively about what 'anthropology in action' means and the sorts of participants that could be involved - for example, events could be mixed media and include participants who engage with anthropology but are not necessarily anthropologists.

Proposals will be considered by the editorial board of Anthropology in Action and the ASA Apply network convenors on the following basis:

The event is relevant to our aims and remit, with a focus on 'engaged' anthropology.

·       The organisers will submit an event report to the journal for the issue following the event, in a format agreed with the editorial board.

·       The geographical location is open.

·        The upper limit of funds to be applied for will be £300. A budget should be submitted to show how the money applied for will be spent.

The proposal must explain how the event will generate an article or special issue for the journal.

Proposals should be sent to me Christine McCourt by the 30th of April 2014

Dr Christine McCourt
Editor, Anthropology in Action

Islamic Art Subject Specialist Network survey

The newly-established Subject Specialist Network (SSN) for Islamic Art and Material Culture would like to invite you to participate in the Islamic Mapping Project. This important and wide-ranging survey aims to gather, for the first time, comprehensive data on the contents and locations of public collections of Islamic art and material culture in the UK and Ireland, however large or small. The survey has a very broad focus which includes all ethnographic material from the Middle East/Islamic lands, and all ethnographic material from diaspora Muslim communities including those in the UK.

Through this survey we also hope to identify the types of support that may be needed among all collections, but especially those with limited resources, staff, or specialist curatorship. This will help the SSN identify areas of need, allowing us to develop targeted workshops and seminars which will support museum professionals working with collections that include Islamic art and material culture.

Results of the survey will be published on the SSN’s new website (to be launched in 2014), where a dedicated series of pages will present the information gathered about collections around the country.

So, if assessing your institution's collection of Islamic art and material culture has long been on the 'To Do' list, now is the moment to engage with the community of Islamic art specialists nationwide by completing this questionnaire. 

To find out more and to participate in this unique effort to map all public Islamic collections in the UK, please email islamicmappingproject@gmail.com to be sent a unique link to the survey questionnaire. Support with filling in the questionnaire and assistance with identifying any Islamic material in the collections you work with is readily available by contacting the same address.

Please note that the deadline for participation in the survey is late April.

(Mis-)Representing Cultures and Objects workshop

Registration is now open for the workshop (Mis-)Representing Cultures and Objects at the University of Stirling.

The workshop is one of the concluding elements of an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award entitled Tibetan Collections in Scotland 1890-1930: using material culture to establish a critical historiography of missionary and military intent. The project examined the ways in which, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Tibetan artefacts were collected and displayed in Scottish museums, particularly in the Edinburgh museum (now National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh).

The Principal Investigator was Dr Timothy Fitzgerald (University of Stirling), with Dr Henrietta Lidchi (National Museums Scotland), and Dr Michael Marten (University of Stirling). The bulk of the research was carried by Inbal Livne, who will shortly be awarded her PhD.

The workshop will offer an opportunity to find out more about the CDA project, as well as exploring some of the issues that arose from it, in particular examining ways in which 

(mis-)representations of cultures and objects are connected and influence one another. We therefore welcome Tibet specialists, but also scholars working in a wide variety of disciplinary and geographic fields who can contribute something to the debate as it relates to the museum sector.

Speakers include:

Inbal Livne – Tibetan Collections in Scotland 1890-1930: using material culture to establish a critical historiography of missionary and military intent Timothy Fitzgerald/Henrie Lidchi

Dr Diana Lange – Dundee and the World”: The Collection(s) of Thomas Alexander Wise (1802-1889)

Lydia Hauth – Emic Perspectives: Community Participation in Ethnographic Museums

Emma Martin – The Barmiak Lama came to explain the meaning of those Tibetan curios which were concerned with religion’. How a colonial officer’s lessons in Tibetan materialised.

Rachel Hand – ‘Offending Our Eyes’: The ethnographic collections of the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin

Dr Jennifer Way – Resembling the Collection: Vietnamese Handicraft at the Smithsonian, ca 1962-

Dr Sabine Dedenbach-Salazar Saenz - Dictionaries of minority languages as ‘exhibits’ – From colonialism to the decolonisation of knowledge

Dr Deborah Sutton – The Plastic Idea: the attributes of Hindu Art in the twentieth century

Rebecca Loder-Neuhold – “The only Africa museum in the Mühlviertel…” Mission museums in German speaking countries

For registration details please visit the website.