SOAS researchers in cultural sector collaborations
5 April 2013
Four recent SOAS doctoral students have won post-doctoral funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to engage in three-month collaborations in London’s cultural sector.
The researchers will apply their strengths in anthropology, art, history and media studies to enhance the impact of the cultural work of their host organisation.
The first project collaborates with the British Museum, and the other three extend SOAS’s existing relationship with Cultural Co-operation, a pioneer in fusing art with education for intercultural exchange.
The newly-launched Doctoral School is leading SOAS’ participation in the initiative, a pilot scheme from AHRC’s Cultural Engagement Fund to foster closer ties between universities and other cultural organisations. The scheme provides early career researchers with opportunities to develop a wide range of skills, particularly in relation to extending the impact of arts and humanities research. At the same time, it makes their knowledge and enthusiasm available for project development outside the university. Each participant will report back to the AHRC on the experience they gained from their project, and how they developed their skills, at the end of May this year, when the pilot scheme will be evaluated.
For Cultural Co-operation Chief Executive Prakash Daswani also looked to the future: "We have worked with SOAS over many years, and are now delighted to welcome three of its early career researchers into our organisation. We're looking forward to them offering us fresh perspectives on our various long-established public activities and expanding their intellectual breadth and scope. Cultural Cooperation's body of work bears witness to more than a quarter century of pioneering intercultural and inter-disciplinary initiatives across the arts and heritage sectors, both in Britain and beyond, thereby offering rich source material for the researchers' continuing professional development. This exciting - and timely - partnership with SOAS promises to help Cultural Coooperation develop the impact and reach of our emerging 5 year plan, 2014-19, and also to lay the ground for future collaborations between our two organisations."
The projects are as follows:
Angela Chiu: I will survey, research and select objects from the British Museum’s historically-significant and diverse collection of artefacts from Thailand. My aims are to increase public access to the collection and to stimulate visitor engagement by showing how the collection’s paintings, sculptures, popular prints, and other objects illustrate popular Buddhist beliefs and practices from ancient times to the present. Working closely with curators and other museum staff, I am looking forward to learning various aspects of museum curatorship including exhibition planning, database management, object handling, museum documentation, and public interaction.
Reza Gholami: My research, which will help orient policy at Cultural Co-operation, explores ways in which education policy makers and teachers approach questions of citizenship, heritage and identity. Looking at models from around the world, I am particularly interested in how we can develop more dynamic, inclusive approaches to citizenship education within diverse, globally-connected, post-secular societies such as the UK. This inevitably requires a close examination of notions of difference, selfhood and belonging. But crucially, I believe, it also involves finding innovative ways of providing children and young people with the means to think about, interact with and question these issues critically, creatively and independently.
Matthew Phillips: The main purpose of my work is to look at nearly three decades of material stored at the Cultural Co-operation in order to establish the potential of creating an archive around the themes of world music, cross-cultural communication and multiculturalism. By working closely with staff at the charity's offices in East London, I will establish the value of creating such an archive and the feasibility of collecting further material from a plethora of organisations in order to extend its breadth and impact. To complete the project I will produce a podcast, made up of interviews and archival material, on the shifting attitudes of British society to the role of cultural dialogue from the 1980s to the present day.
Matti Pohjonen: My research involves a critical dialogue between academic research and the creative industries. By assessing the digital media strategy of Cultural Co-operation's Artist Network, I will see how changing digital media ecologies and articulations of creativity and innovation around them fit into the broader political context of multiculturalism and ethnicity in the UK today. The research has two specific aims: (1) to provide practical suggestions about how new digital tools and services, and the evolving modes of production around them, can potentially help improve the public visibility of multicultural artists and musicians in London involved with the Artist Network; (2) by reference to innovations in the creative industries, particularly new digital media, to explore the relevance of critical academic research to the practical concerns of organisations having to negotiate the changing demands of funding bodies in a changing political climate. Ideally, what would such a theory-practice relationship look like? What are its promises and challenges, for both academic research and creative practice?
Richard Fardon, Head of the Doctoral School, said: “At SOAS we took the view that this opportunity should be extended as widely as possible, and so we are supporting four projects selected from across the range of our arts and humanities in: anthropology, art, history and media studies. We welcome this deepening of our relations with the British Museum and Cultural Co-operation and see it as another step to build upon."
