Current Museum Research
Small Blessings: Animating the Pitt Rivers’ Amulet Collection
Building on the success and impact of more than a decade of DDF grants to improve the care and interpretation of collections, this project will focus on a major collection of religious and folkloric amulets collected by the French ethnologist Adrien de Mortillet more than a century ago and acquired by Sir Henry Wellcome before its transfer to Oxford. Read more.
Reel to Real: Giving the Pitt Rivers Museum’s Sound Collections a Voice
No human sense is more neglected in ethnographic museums than sound. This project will make available for the widest use, both in and beyond the museum space itself, the important sound collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum. Drawing on identified expertise and innovative collaboration with the British Library and the Oxford e-Research Centre, this 12 month project will explore the potential for making the PRM’s sound recordings better understood and more widely used, for the benefit both of the general public and future researchers. Read more.
Conservation Fellowship for research into Captain Cook’s Collections
The Clothworkers’ Foundation has awarded an £80,000 Conservation Fellowship to Jeremy Uden, Senior Conservator at the Museum, for research into objects collected on the first and second voyages of Captain Cook to the Pacific. Learn more about the project.
Ruskin College collaboration
Providing ongoing opportunities in the Museum for student volunteers from Ruskin College. Learn more.
Globalization, Photography, and Race: the Circulation and Return of Aboriginal Photographs in Europe, 2011-2015
As a medium of exchange, photographs of Aboriginal people have served vastly different purposes within indigenous and Western knowledge systems, from embodiments of kin and ancestral powers, to visual data that actively created scientific knowledge. In the digital age, it has become an urgent matter to understand and balance these traditions. This project brings together research on photograph collections in Oxford, Cambridge, Paris and Leiden, to explore the global circulation of photographs of Australian Aboriginal people that began in the 1840s, charting their central role within the major shift in Western visual culture from Enlightenment humanism to the emergence of modern views regarding race and history. It will also return digital copies of photographs currently housed in Europe to their subjects’ descendants, providing a major Indigenous heritage resource. Read more about the project.
Pictures worth a thousand words: Developing a digital image bank at the Pitt Rivers Museum, 2011-12
This Esmée Fairbairn Foundation-sponsored project will seek to develop a digital image bank at the Museum. Devising a methodology for adding images to the on-line collections records, and a management system for those images; to scan and digitise the Museumʼs non- digitised images and to deposit them in the digital ʻimage bankʼ; and to add to the ʻbankʼ existing digital images.
Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) Thesiger Project, 2010–11
This ADACH-sponsored project focuses on photographs taken in the United Arab Emirates by the renowned traveller, writer and photographer Sir Wilfred Thesiger in the 1940s. It will result in a new set of high-resolution digital versions of Thesiger's negatives, as well an enhanced catalogue of the images based on detailed new research. A new database bringing together both images and catalogue details will be produced, enabling this important historical resource to be researched and enjoyed by people in the UAE for the first time. The Museum is pleased to announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with ADACH in 2010 that will enable further close collaboration on the study of the Thesiger collection, building on the earlier generous support of the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.
Something for every body: letting loose the Museumʼs cross-cultural collections of body arts and ornaments, 2010-11
The Pitt Rivers Museum is delighted to have been awarded a grant of £78,120 from the MLAʼs Designation Development Fund (DDF). The project will focus on the Museumʼs exceptional collection of body arts material, ranging from equipment for tattooing to lip plugs, breast implants and Victorian keepsakes. Go to the Body Art website.
Rethinking Pitt-Rivers:
Analysing the Activities of a 19th-Century Collector 2009-12
The Pitt Rivers Museum is pleased to announce that an application to The Leverhulme Trust for funding of a project to 'rethink Pitt-Rivers' has been successful. The three-year project will start in a few months time and more information will follow in due course. Read more about the Rethinking Pitt-Rivers project.
Pitt Rivers Museum Historic Blackfoot shirts to visit Canada, 2009
Our grandfathers have come to visit: Kaahsinooniksi Aotoksisaawooya
Five spectacular Blackfoot men's shirts, some decorated with porcupine quillwork,
hair, and painted designs, are the focus of a new research project that
brings together British and Canadian museums and universities with Blackfoot
people in Canada and the United States. Read more about the Blackfoot project.
Characterizing the World Archaeology Collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum: Defining Research priorities (2010-20), 2009-10
This project aims to characterize the range and research potential of the Museum's world archaeology collections. Led by Dan Hicks and Jeremy Coote, a team of six researchers will work with a Specialist Panel of archaeologists (with an international range of regional and period expertise).Through ongoing catalogue and desk-based research, and a series of research visits to the collection, the project will lead to the publication on the Museum's website of a report that will set out the nature, scope, and significance of the collections, and define future priorities for archaeological research at the Museum.
Ecologies of Modern Heritage: Studying the Cultural & Material Environments of Recent Historical Change, 2009
This Research Cluster focuses on the cross disciplinary study of modern
heritage by employing the concept of heritage ecologies to facilitate new
collaborations in their interpretation and representation. Ecologies of Modern
Heritage brings together leading researchers – from engineering, ecology,
microbiology and conservation to planning, anthropology, archaeology and
the creative arts – and engages with a range of stakeholders from outside
higher education, including the professional heritage sector.
Previous Museum research projects
A list of previous Museum research projects
