📚 I’m thrilled to share that “Researching a Rigged Game: Digital Approaches to Tracing the Illicit Trade in Cultural Objects”, edited by @dremilinesmith.bsky.social and myself, is now published and available as Open Access via @springernature.com. 🔗https://lnkd.in/gBCv2KDH

We need to utterly transform how we protect our heritage: more funding for museums, more education and disrupting our equation of heritage with monetary value. This isn't a one off. From our fiekds to our museum cases, antiquities are seen as objects for personal acquisition and monetary gain. 🏺

All eyes on her! Dismantling 'Egypt' in UK museums artuk.org/discover/sto...

Interesting paper from former @uclarchaeology.bsky.social PhD researcher Dr Tian Tian on histories of Egyptological knowledge production in China 👇

“The last three to four months has been the biggest flood of antiquities trafficking I have ever seen, from any country, ever.” ://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/08/looted-from-syria-sold-on-facebook-antiquities-smuggling-surges-after-fall-of-assad?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

SMA has responded to calls for changes to legislation and practice regarding human remains, by collaborating with several organisations to agree a joint statement on on the retention, display, and provision of access to human remains from British archaeological contexts. socmusarch.org.uk/news/

New exhibition now open @hornimanmuseum.bsky.social part of our @ukri.org AHRC project Mobilising Collections for Institutional Change scenenow.com/ArtsAndCultu...

Chapter 1 introduces the excellent work of our collaborators and reflects on how and why Med archaeology collections were formed in the region. I hope that this volume encourages more reflection on the value of these heritages in dialogue with the First Nation's cultures of their new homelands. 📜🏺🏛

@dremilinesmith.bsky.social and I give some of our thoughts on the provenance of lots offered at TEFAF this year hyperallergic.com/997650/champ...

And to his co-curator, @uclarchaeology.bsky.social museum studies graduate Trish Robert’s 👏🏻 well done both!

The Museo Egizio (Egyptian Museum) in Turin has some really interesting collaborations with contemporary artists going on right now🏺https://www.museoegizio.it/en/explore/news/10584/

UCL Press has just released War Essays, by Zainab Bahrani, the Edith Porada Professor and Chair of the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. It's open access, so download away! @smh-historians.bsky.social uclpress.co.uk/book/war-ess...

Not just an open access book from @uclpress.bsky.social but also a lovely artefact! Got the physical copy today - colour pictures throughout & all. uclpress.co.uk/book/contemp...

In which I question the oft-repeated claim that artistic intervention puts the past and present into dialogue. But which pasts? To what ends? Based on interviews with curators & artists, and reflections on not the end product but the process.

Publication day 🥳 one outcome from my @britishacademy.bsky.social mid-career Fellowship now OA & free to download 👇. uclpress.co.uk/book/contemp...

Still time to apply. Join @nannonstevens.bsky.social and myself, addressing the record of the last Neanderthals in Britain. Be part of a new era of research, testing assumptions and setting out a new agenda for discovery. 🏺🦣🧪

Sadly this is exactly the same experience I’ve had as a journal editor….

New publication out today! 🏺🗃️ This is my argument for an economic history of heritage-making in African states over the past 40 years, and how this speaks to themes like sovereignty, commodification of tradition, and (of course) the idea of usable pasts >>

Thanks @coloursburntin.bsky.social for a great session. Lots of great projects, from @lisarandisi.bsky.social archaeological ephemera www.ucl.ac.uk/culture/proj... between object & archive, to

🏺🦣

One day to go until @tag45.bsky.social and our session 'Excavating the Collection'! Friday 13th starting at 14:00! Who's speaking you ask? More details below 👇

Counting down to @tag45.bsky.social ! I'm running the session 'Excavating the Collection: New Evolutions in the Archaeology of Museum Collections' this Friday 13th 14:00-16:30, and am so excited to be joined by @alicestevenson.bsky.social as discussant! For more info 👇

Great to see this volume in the world. Edited vols like this take a lot of time & work so congrats to the editors (wrote my chapter while pregnant- now planning a 6th birthday party 🙃). Spotted a few other @uclarchaeology.bsky.social contributions too…

[redoing this b/c my original post contained a wrong date!] Interested in Victorian cultures of display or spectacle; collections; archives; exhibitions; museums; or galleries; or anything else related to EXHIBITING in literature, art, science, material culture, etc? Send us your abstract!

Yesterday, I went to the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology to do some research. (Thanks @lisarandisi.bsky.social). Today is my daughter Emily's 10th birthday. What I found made me rethink what I know & understand how I feel. Warning: mention of baby loss www.debbiechallis.com/post/ephemer...

Just learned of Prof Colin Renfrew’s passing. His class on contemporary art & architecture in my archaeology BA was my most memorable course. Bemused by it at the time, it gave me a confidence to go beyond traditional readings for archaeology. RIP www.arch.cam.ac.uk/news/profess...

Spent a LOT of time travelling this weekend but time flew as absorbed by this read from Roberta Mazza - going straight on the reading list for the UCL Archaeology module Antiquities & the Law which I’m resurrecting next year: www.sup.org/books/histor...

Would like to know suggestions for this too…

*funded fellowships* Come research at the Petrie Museum! More info here: www.ucl.ac.uk/research-ins...

National museums often present history through the idea of the museum as a ‘view from nowhere’ & everywhere at the same time. What is missing is reflection on how the museum itself obtained & reframed the objects in order to create its own seemingly universal narrative. There are other ways. 👇