Parallel Histories, entwined Futures?: Exploring the potential of unaccessioned collections in (post)ethnographic museums

All over the Global North, ethnographic museums have been under increasing pressure to address colonial or racist representations or practices.

These discussions tend to equate the museum with its formal collections, in other words, the items that have been accessioned and entered into formal registers and catalogues.

In contrast, this project focuses on an underexplored category of objects in ethnographic museums, the so called ”parallel” or ”handling collections”; items not formally accessioned or entered into registers.

As relatively unregulated, and therefore free to be handled and undergo physical transformation, such objects hold important possibilities for reaching new audiences and finding innovative ways of re-imagining the museum.

The aim is twofold: to provide knowledge on such under-researched collections, including the objects’ pathways of existence inside of the museum and their link to various governing regimes, and explore ways that they can contribute to more sustainable, just and inclusive engagements with the public.

The project spans over three years, will look at three ethnographic museums in Europe (Lisbon, Leipzig, Gothenburg), and combines ethnographic methods with archival ones.

Year 1 will be spent in CARMAH, the foreign host institution, doing a literature review and fine-tuning the research design; year 2 will be dedicated to fieldwork and year 3 to analysing and disseminating the results.