Object Matters researchers in Museum & Place

Four members of the interdisciplinary research project Object Matters: Archaeology and Heritage in the 21st Century have contributed to the research anthology Museum & Place that was recently published by ICOFOM – ICOM’s international committee for museology. The volume called Museum & Place, edited by Kerstin Smeds (professor emeritus at Umeå University), and Ann Davis (professor emeritus at the University …

Ingar Figenschau in Norwegian Archaeological Review

Ph.D-candidate Ingar Figenschau has written an article for Norwegian Archaeological Review entitled “The Heritage of War and the Discourse of Sustainability”. In the article Figenschau critically questions the idea of sustainability as it is brought to bear on WWII-heritage in northern Norway. The idea of sustainability, Figenschau claims, is “increasingly sustained by an associated vocabulary of concepts that promote cultural …

ARV. Exhibition at Tromsø Museum. Illustration: Bjørn Hatteng/Þóra Pétursdóttir, UiT.

ARV Exhibition opening in Tromsø on March 22

The work of archaeologists Bjørnar Olsen og Þóra Pétursdóttir at the Arctic University of Norway  has resulted in an exhibition called ARV at Tromsø Museum which opens at 6pm on March 22. The exhibition is based on the ongoing research project Unruly Heritage at UiT and invites us to rethink our notion of heritage: “Cultural heritage is associated with old and …

Exploring Biographies. Publication in CLARA

Saphinaz Amal Naguib has published an article in the open access journal CLARA – Classical Art and Archaeology entitled Exploring Biographies. Ancient Egyptian Funerary Statuettes at the Museum of Cultural History (MCH), University of Oslo: “Small funerary statuettes shaped as mummiform figurines are among the most common ancient Egyptian artefacts to be found in museums of cultural history worldwide. The …

From the Fjords to the Nile

Object Matters researcher Saphinaz Amal Naguib has contributed to the anthology From the Fjords to the Nile: Essays in honour of Richard Holton Pierce on his 80th birthday edited by Paul Steiner, Alexandros Tsakos, Eivind Heldaas Seland which is out on Archaeopress.  Her chapter contribution is entitled “Bridging Gaps: Archaeological Sources and Resources in Museums” and deals with the archaeology …

Ingar Figenschau on forskning.no

In an interview with the national news portal for scientific research, forskning.no, Ph.D.-candidate and Object Matters-member Ingar Figenschau from The Arctic University of Norway – UiT, talks about the significance of material remains of war and the changes that these undergo once they are subjected to interpretation and preservation in a heritage framework. As opposed to the practice of restoring …

Saphinaz Amal Naguib in Journal of Transcultural Studies

A glimpse of Saphinaz’ work on the Arab Spring and grafitti is available online in her recent article ‘Engaged Ephemeral Art: Street Art and the Egyptian Arab Spring’. In it she considers the ways an intangible oral heritage of popular sayings and poetry is very briefly transformed into concrete, powerful, politically laden images on the walls of urban public spaces …

Caitlin DeSilvey – Curated Decay

Caitlin DeSilvey, associate professor of cultural geography at the University of Exeter, and member of Bjørnar Olsen’s CAS-project After Discourse: Things, Archaeology, And Heritage in the 21st Century, has a book out now on University of Minnesota Press. In Curated Decay: Heritage Beyond Saving, DeSilvey explores several themes which compel us to rethink conventional notions of heritage conservation. Her emphasis, …

Special issue – Primitive tider

The field of contemporary archaeology is more vital than ever. The new issue of the Norwegian journal of archaeology called Primitive Tider has reserved 175 pages for scholars with an interest in the recent past. With this edition archaeologists with a shared interest in contemporary matters, offer a glimpse into the broad and eclectic research going on within contemporary archaeology. …

Unruly Heritage: An Archaeology of the Anthropocene

According UNESCO’s definition, heritage is “our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations”. While exemplary inclusive, this hardly reflects concern for the fact that our legacy is becoming increasingly mixed and messy: archipelagos of sea-borne debris, ruining metropolises, industrial wastelands, sunken nuclear submarines, melting glaciers and toxic residues in seals …