The Geoff Egan Memorial Lecture 2025 by Dr Beatriz Marín-Aguilera - hybrid

We are delighted to announce that the 2025 Geoff Egan Memorial Lecturer is Dr Beatriz Marín-Aguilera.

Dr Marin-Aguilera is Lecturer and Derby Fellow in Historical Legacies of Empire at the Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool. Previously a Renfrew Fellow at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge, her research centres Indigenous agency and decolonial approaches in the ancient Mediterranean and the colonial Americas thorough the materiality of everyday life.

Her current project, ‘Anticolonial Caribbean Futures’, runs in collaboration with the Kalinagos in Dominica, the Taínos in Jamaica, the University of the West indies, Afro-Indigenous descendants in the UK, the SDCELAR-British Museum, and National Museums Liverpool.

An Archaeology of Radical Tenderness

Archaeology as a discipline is at an ethical crossroad. Claims to be neutral and to depoliticise our practice – or to defend the status of archaeology as an ‘objective science’ – have alarmingly (re)gained traction. This turn away from humans (past and present), their suffering, and the ethics of care is the product of unaddressed postcolonial demands that hide our privileged position as (white) archaeologists.

Drawing on a long tradition of the social in Latin American arts and scholarship, I propose an ‘archaeology of radical tenderness’ that combines protest and profound critical thought with deep care, affection, and vulnerability, especially in the face of systemic harm and oppressive political structures. Using the archaeological record and the living experience, the archaeology of radical tenderness challenges inherited power structures and colonial histories, offering new alternatives for our discipline as a site of openness, resistance, and relatedness. The archaeology of radical tenderness advocates for an embodied-situated practice and a critical and loving approach to social justice, emphasising collective care, the transformation of communities through shared vulnerability, and the healing needed to birth new (more equal) futures.

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