Colonial histories, museum collections, FabLabs and community engagement

I was delighted to be asked to contribute to a round table discussion (which, under pandemic conditions took place asynchronously online!), with colleagues from the OU for the latest issue of Open Arts Journal. The resulting paper was published at the end of 2020. Abstract below: This roundtable explores how issues of the local and…

Chinese Propaganda Posters at the British Library

I’ve recently published a paper in Visual Resources (36:2), which rounds up the cataloguing project I undertook at the British Library back in 2015. Abstract below: In this paper, I discuss a project designed to increase knowledge of and make more accessible a collection of post-1949 Chinese propaganda posters at the British Library, for the…

Two recent guest blogs – Post-1949 Chinese revolutionary art and design

I have recently published* a pair of guest blogposts on the subject of post-1949 Chinese revolutionary art and design. The first, ‘Knock Down the Gang of Four!’: caricatures in the British Library’s collection of post-1949 Chinese posters, is available from the Language of Authoritarian Regimes website. The second, ‘Do the Chinese always smile?’ Exhibiting the…

Revolutionary nian hua at the British Library: new paper

A short article I’ve written about the British Library’s collection of revolutionary nian hua (‘New Years prints’) has recently been published – in Chinese translation – in the latest issue of the Nianhua Journal of the Feng Jicai Institute (p. 27). The paper is based on a blog post I wrote during my BICC Postdoctoral…

Just published: A Museum Studies Approach to Heritage

I am delighted to announce that A Museum Studies Approach to Heritage, the latest in the Leicester Readers series published by Routledge, is now available to buy. Co-edited by myself, Sheila Watson and Katy Bunning, the book draws on existing work and brand new chapters written by academics from across the world. Here’s the blurb from…

Heritage: A Museum Studies Approach

The manuscript is nearly finished and close to submission, and we have a publication date for Heritage: A Museum Studies Approach; the new Leicester Reader in Museum Studies co-edited by Sheila Watson, Katy Bunning and myself. It should, according to the Routledge website, be available from 30 Jan 2018. More details on the Routledge website (note…

Heritage and Interpretation (Leicester Readers in Museum Studies)

A quick heads-up: The new Leicester Reader that myself, Sheila Watson and Katy Bunning have been working on over the last eighteen months to two years finally has a publication date (30 June 2017) and is now listed on Amazon. Image via Christian Ostrosky on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

New Chinese Propaganda pages on the British Library website

Great news! The British Library now has an online guide to the Chinese Propaganda poster collection, which includes a downloadable list of posters with their shelfmarks, based on the catalogue I put together at the end of last year.