Early Career Research Fellowships in Cultural and Heritage Institutions

Dr Marleen Boschen’s project Future Ecologies of Art proposes to read artists as crucial conversation partners in engaging with botanical collections, specifically the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. Informed by an analysis of selected arts collaborations at Kew since the 1960s, the project investigates how botanical gardens can work with artists on diverse and inclusive storytelling about two issues: the climate crisis and social justice. This project emphasises the power of artists to capture imaginations and advance alternative and interdisciplinary forms of knowledge-creation. Read less

Dr Ann-Marie Foster is a public historian with research interests in digital access, crowdsourced collections, and histories of everyday life. Foster’s project, Accessible Pasts, Equitable Futures, picks up on their long-standing interest in archives and access. This project will help create a more equitable future for historical research. Based at Imperial War Museums, the aim of the project is to work with citizen historians to create increased access to digital heritage collections. Read less

Thupten’s praxis-based research focuses on creating a sustainable and equitable relationship between the transnational Tibetan diaspora and museums. It seeks to enable displaced Tibetans to access and re-engage with their displaced material heritage in museums (entangled in British and Chinese colonialism) and work towards countering the historic and acute absence of Tibetan voices in the sector. Through collaborative enquiry and co-production of knowledge, this project asks how Tibetan museum collections could be reactivated and reimagined. Read less

Jennifer Morris is a historian specialising in museums and collecting in Borneo. Her project explores the Borneo collections in the British Museum and other institutions, most of which are under-researched and largely inaccessible to Borneo communities today. More than 2000 of these objects were collected by Charles Hose (1863-1929), whose collections form a case study for reconstructing patterns of colonial knowledge-dissemination; and collaborating with stakeholder communities to explore how these objects might be reinterpreted and accessibility improved. Read less

Dr Aparajita Mukhopadhyay is a historian of the British Empire in the 19th century. Her research sits at the intersection between Imperial History and History of Technology. She is particularly interested in Indian involvement and mediation in scientific and technological knowledge production in colonial South Asia. Mukhopadhyay’s Fellowship will explore the impact of economic botany on the agrarian ecology of South Asia in the late nineteenth century through the lens of Indian involvement in an imperial imperative. Using collections (primarily tea and silk) at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, this Fellowship will provide an empirically rich, and historically informed analysis that will underpin Kew’s ongoing and future partnerships in contemporary South Asia. Read less

Dr Sophia Nicolov is based in the Natural History Museum’s Cetacea Collection, Vertebrate Division. She is an environmental historian and draws on the interdisciplinary environmental humanities to explore the entangled histories of humans and whales, including whale strandings and whaling. Sophia’s project is focused on the role of British Empire in the Southern Hemisphere in contributing to the Cetacea Collection, including Antarctic exploration and whaling. The project partner is the National Oceanographic Library, University of Southampton Read less

Siôn Parkinson is an artist, composer and an expert on the cultural history of stinkhorn fungi. He has a PhD in sound studies from the University of Leeds, and he trained as a sculptor at Central Saint Martins and The Slade. Siôn is investigating the scent of mushrooms as cultural heritage, with a special focus on the malodour of the dune stinkhorn Phallus hadriani. Research will combine odour analysis and creative interpretations of mushroom-related olfactory objects, such as historical books, artworks, and fungus-rich environments across RBGE’s Regional Gardens. This will be used to inform a range of public activities, including a major exhibition and events programme at Inverleith House, Edinburgh. Read less

Dr Audrey Scardina is an archaeologist and heritage professional who researches the relationship between communities and their built environment. If we see the historic environment as alive and ever-changing, how does that shift our capacity to engage with it? With a focus on the Properties in Care managed by Historic Environment Scotland and a view towards Equality Diversity and Inclusion, the fellowship will aim to understand how policy and management of the historic environment can adapt to community needs and be flexible, yet resilient, in the face of climate change and loss. Read less