Dr Vibe Nielsen
Dr Vibe Nielsen is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation and affiliated with the Pitt Rivers Museum and Linacre College at the University of Oxford as Junior Research Fellow. Her research focuses on processes of decolonisation and changing curatorial practices at the Pitt Rivers Museum and le Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.
As a postdoctoral researcher she has conducted fieldwork in the United Kingdom, France and Italy. The latter in her capacity as Visiting Fellow at the Danish Academy in Rome.
She wrote her PhD thesis Demanding Recognition: Curatorial Challenges in the Exhibition of Art from South Africa (2019) as part of the Global Europe research project at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. Through anthropological fieldwork, as well as historical and museological methods, her PhD thesis examines contemporary curatorial practices in South African museums and art galleries. She continued working on these issues in her postdoctoral affiliation with the department (2019-2020) and has recently published her analysis of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town in the anthology Global Art in Local Art Worlds – Changing Hierarchies of Value (2023), which she has co-edited with Professor Oscar Salemink, Dr Jens Sejrup and Dr Amélia Corrêa. Her article In the Absence of Rhodes: decolonizing South African universities (2021) in the Ethnic and Racial Studies Journal vol. 44, no. 3 is similarly based on her doctoral fieldwork in South Africa.
Before her appointment as PhD Fellow at the University of Copenhagen, Vibe Nielsen worked at the National Museum of Denmark as Curator of Public Programmes. She received her master's degree in Museum Studies at University College London in 2012 and her master's degree in Modern Culture at the University of Copenhagen in 2015. In the final thesis of her MA in Museum Studies she explored the dissemination of the British involvement in the transatlantic slave trade in museums in London and Liverpool. This was an aspect she researched further in the final thesis of her MA in Modern Culture, where she analysed how Danish and British museums in different ways are dealing with their countries' colonial pasts. She further holds a BA in European Ethnology from the University of Copenhagen from 2010.
See further project information here
Research Summary
Discussions about how museums can respectfully represent all parts of society and critically engage with their own colonial past have made way for new strategies of inclusion and have given previously untold stories new levels of attention. During this research fellowship I will examine the links between museums and activism and explore how recent calls for decolonisation impact museum practices in the leading ethnographic museums of the two most dominant former colonial powers in Europe, the United Kingdom and France. My main focus is the changing curatorial practices at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and le Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, where debates about decolonisation and repatriation have been central in recent years.
CV
Carlsberg Foundation Visiting Fellow, Pitt Rivers Museum and Linacre College, University of Oxford 2021-2024
Postdoc, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen 2019-2020
PhD Fellow, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen 2016-2019
Curator of Public Programmes, National Museum of Denmark 2015-2016
MA in Modern Culture, University of Copenhagen 2015
MA in Museum Studies, University College London 2012
BA in European Ethnology, University of Copenhagen 2010
Selected recent publications
Global Art in Local Art Worlds: Changing Hierarchies of Value (2023) Co-edited with Oscar Salemink, Jens Sejrup and Amélia Côrrea, Routledge.
Ambivalent Art at the Tip of a Continent: The Zeitz MOCAA and its quest for global recognition (2023), Global Art in Local Art Worlds: Changing Hierarchies of Value ed. by Oscar Salemink, Jens Sejrup, Amélia Côrrea and Vibe Nielsen, Routledge: 77-99.
Botanikkens Koloniale Rødder – Kulturhistorisk formidling af plantesamlinger i Storbritanniens botaniske haver (2022) Kulturstudier 13 (2): 161-184.
Nye roller for gamle ting: Etnografiske samlingers samtidsrelevans i en verden i forandring (2022) Co-authored with Katrine M. Bach, Mille Gabriel, Ulrik H. Johnsen and Cecil M.S. Pallesen. Jordens Folk: Samling på Verden 57 no. 2, ed. by Katrine M. Bach, Mille Gabriel, Ulrik H. Johnsen, Vibe Nielsen and Cecil M.S. Pallesen: 2-10.
“What’s in a name?” Gentænkning af genstandstekster på Pitt Rivers Museum (2022) In conversation with Marenka Thompson-Odlum. Jordens Folk: Samling på Verden 57 no. 2, ed. by Katrine M. Bach, Mille Gabriel, Ulrik H. Johnsen, Vibe Nielsen and Cecil M.S. Pallesen: 83-93.
How to Practice Decoloniality in Museums: A review of Practicing Decoloniality in Museums – A Guide with Global Examples by Csilla E. Ariese and Magdalena Wróblewska (2022) Museum Worlds: Advances in Research no. 10: 230-234.
Kunstbegrebets Koloniale Klassifikationer til Forhandling på Museer i Sydafrika (2021) Kulturstudier no. 1: 89-112.
In the absence of Rhodes: decolonizing South African universities (2021) Ethnic and Racial Studies vol. 43 issue 3: 396-414.
Museale formidlinger af fortiden som kolonimagt på danske og britiske museer (2017) Slagmark no. 75: 81-94.
Er kvinder særlig skikkede til lovgivningsvirksomhed? 100-året for kvinders valgret (2016) Co-authored with Mette Byriel-Thygesen and Rikke Tjørnehøj. Nationalmuseets Arbejdsmark: 274-287.