PhD Opportunity: The historic role of missionary societies in shaping children’s understandings of Britain’s place in the world

A Collaborative Doctoral Partnership studentship between the National Maritime Museum and the Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council
 

The Hope of the World, Harold Copping

Start date: October 2019

Application Deadline: Friday 3rd May 2019 at 23h59min
Interviews will take place on Tuesday 21stMay 2019 in Greenwich

Supervisors
Dr Chris Wingfield (Sainsbury Research Unit)
Dr Robert Blyth (National Maritime Museum)

Project Overview 
In The Making of English National Identity (2003) Krishan Kumar argued that English identity was characterised by a form of ‘missionary nationalism’:

a nationalism that finds its principle not so much in equating state and nation as in extending the supposed benefits of a particular nation’s rule and civilization to other peoples. 

Kumar did not, however, particularly probe the ‘missionary’ component of ‘missionary nationalism’ – the degree to which exposure to missionary propaganda from a young age profoundly shaped the political, cultural and social attitudes adopted by many children in later life.

For generations of children growing up in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain,
 it was at Sunday school that they first came into contact with images of people living in other parts of the world. The scale of this impact should not to be underestimated. Susan Thorne (2006, 143) has suggested that ‘virtually every working-class child attended Britain’s massively popular Sunday Schools at one point or another’.

Images commissioned by Britain’s missionary societies formed part of their extensive educational programmes, and frequently embodied ideas about Britain’s providential role in the world (Brewer 2005). We might read these in terms of nineteenth-century ideas about ‘the White Man’s burden’, and as part of what we might now call historical constructions of ‘whiteness’, or perhaps more controversially 'the white saviour complex'.

As Britain embarks on a new chapter in its relationship with the wider world, it becomes increasingly important to re-consider the ways in which this relationship has been imagined in the past. While ‘decolonisation’ has become a buzzword in both museum and academic circles, it has frequently been associated with the attitudes and positions associated with ‘high imperialism’. This project is intended to develop a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which forms of benevolent paternalism were shaped and propagated in the context of British missionary societies, through their engagements with children and young people across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Full details of the project and information about how to applay are available on the UEA website.

Job opportunity: Medicine Galleries Research Fellowship – Culturally Sensitive Objects

Do you have experience of working with culturally sensitive objects, ethnographic collections or museum policies? Do you have experience of delivering significant research projects?

The Science Museum Group has an astonishingly diverse and internationally significant collection of 7.3 million items from science, technology, engineering, medicine, transport and media. The Group also cares for Sir Henry Wellcome's Museum Collection, which contains thousands of objects related to health and medicine on long term loan from the Wellcome Trust. This material covers a broad range of cultures and includes a small number of objects which may be considered sacred, secret or otherwise culturally sensitive.

The Science Museum Group and Wellcome Collection are examining how we store, interpret, document and display these objects. Thanks to funding from the Wellcome Trust - provided to encourage greater academic engagement with the medical collections during the Science Museum's medicine galleries redevelopment project - we are delighted to offer a year-long fellowship to identify and review best practice concerning the care of culturally sensitive objects and collections originating from indigenous cultures, including items from Australasia and North America. 

In this role you will identify objects which may be defined as sacred, secret or otherwise culturally sensitive and identify, review and report on relevant policy statements (both nationally and internationally) regarding the care, storage, documentation and display of such objects, as well as best practice regarding access. You will also be tasked with planning, delivering and documenting workshops at key project milestones to discuss issues relevant to the research project with internal and external stakeholders. 

More details can be found on The Science Museum website.

The deadline is 02/12/2018.

Supporting the National Museum, Rio de Janeiro

You will all have heard of the fire that gutted the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro.  Following discussions amongst interested parties as to what could be done to help, the RAI convened a roundtable meeting to discuss possible support.

Attendees came from universities, national and university museums, RBG Kew, British Council, National Archives, AHRC and Canning House.  MEG was invited as a representative of the museum sector.

Professor João Pacheco de Oliveira of the National Museum, Rio de Janeiro, addressed the meeting, with simultaneous translation for the non-Portuguese-speaking delegates.  He spoke very movingly of the huge loss that people feel – not just the staff and academics who worked, collected and carried out their research there, but also many ordinary people for whom the 200 year old museum represents the national identity of Brazil.

Staff have not yet been allowed into the building to assess the damage, so actual losses are unknown.  Some material may have survived underneath the collapsing building, or it may be that everything was destroyed.  The building itself is unsafe, and police have closed the remains as a possible crime scene.

The fire has meant a huge cultural loss: the anthropology collections, being in large part organic materials, are assumed lost, especially the material from indigenous Brazilian communities.

The archives are also assumed lost: there was no support for digitisation, so digital copies only exist where researchers had made their own for their own work – therefore it is random selections and perhaps not good quality. 

The fire is creating opportunities.  Indigenous communities have already offered to make new objects for the museum – they see the museum as important for their cultures and histories.  Much of the lost collections had no or little data, so this is an opportunity to collect data as well as objects, working in close and respectful collaboration with indigenous communities.  But, some of the lost material represented a meeting of cultures, indigenous and colonial, 200 years ago, and that cannot be replaced. Indigenous communities are not fossilised, they are changing over time, so the material culture changes.  The professor gave the example of feather cloaks: the 16^th century cloaks in the collection were made with red feathers.  That red bird is now extinct, and 21^st century cloaks are made with raven feathers.

It was agreed that the lead should come from the Museum: they are not in a position yet to accept help or new accessions.  Once they can access the building, the need will be for forensic archaeologists to excavate the ruins and salvage what can be saved.  Staff will then know better what has been lost, and can start to plan the rebuilding of the museum.

It may be that part of that rebuilding is digital: research from academics who used the collection in the past, photos from visitors of the displays, images of objects in other museums, oral histories from staff, researchers and visitors.  Then there may be a point where the museum asks for loans or transfers from other collections, but that point is a long way off yet.

I suggested that MEG could help with organising digital images from non-national and non-university museums, using data from the various surveys and our professional network to find material in the UK.  MEG members had responded to the request for ideas with suggestions for oral histories and testimonies, crowdsourcing of digital images used to curate online galleries, restore collective memory and create education resources.

As there is more news we will pass it on.

Sue Gies (MEG Chair)