The story of South Asian coins in UK Museums, presented by Ms Shreya Gupta, University of Exeter and Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

In this talk, Shreya Gupta will outline the history of coin collecting in colonial India, discussing how British civil service and military men got interested in collecting and studying Indian coins during their postings in India. Influenced by their background in Classics, they formed huge collections of ‘Greek-looking’ coins which, on their return to the UK, they deposited in the Ashmolean, the British Museum and the Fitzwilliam. Shreya will recount the story of their journey to UK museums in this lecture.

About the speaker: Shreya is a third year PhD student at the University of Exeter and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Shreya is working on the AHRC funded Collaborative Doctorial Project ‘Decolonising Collections: Investigating Knowledge Formation Networks in Colonial India’. In her research she studies the role of Indian actors in creating coin collections now housed in UK museums as well as the role of networks of British and Indian actors in producing knowledge on Indian history and numismatics on their basis.

Proactive Repatriation and Justice-Seeking for Ancestors in Edinburgh University’s “Skull Room”, presented by Ms Nicole Anderson, University of Edinburgh

Edinburgh University’s Anatomical Museum’s “Skull Room” holds the cranial remains of nearly 1800 individuals, stolen by phrenologists, anatomists and graduate students in the 19th and 20th centuries. This lecture reflects on a collaborative project of reparative justice that sought to reconnect First Nations and Inuit ancestors to their living descendants. It explores the importance of proactive repatriation and knowledge-sharing with descendant communities, the challenges of working with incomplete provenance, and the responsibilities inherent in bearing witness to colonial collections by researchers and academic institutions.

About the speaker: Nicole Anderson (she/her) is a doctoral candidate in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, and was recently appointed as Curator of the Americas at National Museums Scotland. She has a Masters degree in Social Justice Education from the University of Toronto. Her doctoral research involved facilitating the first proactive repatriation of ancestral (human) remains at the University of Edinburgh’s Anatomical Museum by connecting First Nations and Inuit ancestors to their living descendants. Her other research interests include anti-colonial pedagogies, care ethics and the politics of emotion.