Museums and Decolonisation: Stories from the Pitt Rivers Museum (Lecture 2)

How can ethnographic and world cultures museums use their collections and galleries as spaces which create active discussion around issues facing society today?

The Pitt Rivers Museum is known for being a visually stunning Victorian space which houses an awe-inspiring number and variety of objects. We carry out a wide range of research, education and outreach activities, engaging with communities locally and globally.

Although many people think the Museum has never been updated it has been a place of constant change and innovation since it was founded in 1884.

Today, its dense, multi-layered displays function as a 'democracy of things', revealing fascinating distinctions and parallels across cultures. We work towards actively mobilising the museum as a unique space for conversations on contemporary issues, such as colonial history, identity, migration and climate change. We ask ourselves how can museums bring a wider range of stories and communities into our spaces in a way that is inclusive and encourages reflection, which is both compelling and challenging in equal measure? This series of lectures explores how Pitt Rivers staff are developing new approaches to these questions from a range of different perspectives - from the labels we write to the stories we tell about the objects in our care.

Monday 18 October: Lecture 2

In Lecture 2, Marenka Thompson-Odlum will speak about 'From Modern Savage to Human: Decolonial Approaches to Museum Interpretation and Collecting at the Pitt Rivers Museum'.

How this lecture series will work

A new recorded lecture will be released weekly each Monday, for the four weeks of the series. (See release dates below.)

There will be a live, online Q&A sessions for you to join - your chance to ask questions of the speakers. This will be held from 4-5pm (UTC) on Friday 5 November.

The recorded lectures will remain online and available to watch and review until Friday 12 November. (For reasons of data privacy, the Q&A sessions will not be recorded.)