Working with traumatic histories

This one-day workshop brings together heritage professionals, academics, artists and members of the public to explore histories and legacies of ‘scientific’ racism in Liverpool heritage institutions.

Museum displays and university curricula have historically played an important role in teaching and promoting racism. The medical, anthropological and anatomical collections of Liverpool heritage institutions include objects, books, specimens and ancestral remains that were used to spread pseudoscientific racial hierarchies during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

How should Liverpool’s heritage institutions respond to histories and legacies of ‘scientific’ racism? What needs to be done to acknowledge museums’ and universities’ responsibility in forming and spreading racist ideologies? Is there a way to represent heritage institutions’ historic complicity in ‘scientific’ racism without repeating and perpetuating racial trauma?

The workshop addresses these questions from a range of perspectives. There will be keynote presentations by Dr Rebecca Martin, Research Project Officer at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, and Michelle Peterkin-Walker, a socially-engaged artist, activist and filmmaker. The programme includes group discussions about items in collections held by National Museums Liverpool and the University of Liverpool.

The workshop will inform ongoing work to design new displays at the redeveloped International Slavery Museum.

This is an ESRC Festival of Social Science and National Museums Liverpool Collaboration Fund Event

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Host or Publisher School of Histories, Languages and Cultures