Pitt Rivers Museum - University of Oxford

Elizabeth Cory-Pearce continued her research on the Museum’s Maori collections,
developing a number of conference papers, forthcoming publications, and prospective
funding applications. She responded to enquiries relating to the Museum’s Maori and Pacific
collections, and received one national and one international research visitor. In August 2006,
she conducted comparative research in museums and communities on Canada’s west coast,
funded by a Sir Ernest Cassell Award. In May she gave a paper at the joint American
Ethnological Society / Cultural Anthropology Society of Canada conference at the University
of Toronto on the Makereti collection, colonial museology, and subaltern scholarship. In June
she attended a conference on ‘Comparative Museology’ at the History of Art Department,
University of Oxford. In July she delivered a paper, entitled ‘Body Arts, Body Parts and the
Limits of Embodiment’, on the Museum’s Robley collection and toi moko (Maori tattooed
preserved heads), at the Royal Anthropological Institute’s annual film festival and conference
at the University of Manchester’s Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology. She gave lectures
and tutorials in the series ‘Introduction to Anthropological Theory’, ‘Social Analysis and
Interpretation’, and ‘Cultural Representations, Beliefs and Practices’, and contributed to the
core lecture series ‘Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology’. She also gave lectures
and tutorials in the Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography core course, ‘Cultural
Representations’, and the ‘Research Methods in Material Anthropology and Museum
Ethnography’ series. She contributed to the ‘Research Methods in Visual Anthropology’
sessions, and to the ‘Ethnographic Film’ series for the Visual Anthropology degree. She gave
tutorials in anthropology to first- and second-year undergraduate students in the Human
Sciences, and lectured on ‘Anthropological Approaches to Art’ in the History of Art
department. With Laura Peers, she convened the Museum’s seminar series in Material
Anthropology and Museum Ethnography in Hilary Term, and gave a seminar in the series.
She acted as assessor for four confirmations of status, supervised two M.Phil. students, and
examined coursework, dissertations, and exam scripts for the undergraduate and graduate
degrees. She served as Director of Studies for Archaeology & Anthropology at Magdalen
College.
Marina de Alarcón continued to manage key aspects of the Museum’s collections work,
including accessioning new acquisitions, dealing with uncatalogued historical material,
developing new locations indexes for reserve collections, and administering loans. Much of
her time this year was devoted to packing the music collections and preparing for their
removal to a new repository. She continued to coordinate the Museum’s redisplay
programme, selecting objects and preparing texts in collaboration with colleagues, and to
liaise with Thames Valley Police concerning the security of the Museum’s firearms
collection. In November 2006 she attended the two-day conference ‘Don’t Panic: Dealing
with Hazardous Materials in Museum Collections’, organized by the Care of Collections and
Metals sections of the Institute of Conservation, at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. In
May 2007 she attended a symposium at Brighton Museum on the material and visual culture
of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Also in May she couriered a loan to the Museum für
Völkerkunde in Vienna for the exhibition Benin: Kings and Rituals, Court Arts from Nigeria.
Kate Gardner continued to have overall responsibility for the Museum’s front-of-house, but
also took on the role of marketing assistant. She assisted Kate White with access matters and
Museum events, developed an e-mail database, promoted the Museum through various
media, and designed the Museum’s printed materials. She attended training on developing
audiences and the use of targeted marketing. She continued her studies for the diploma course
of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.
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