Object Lessons from Tibet & the Himalayas

We would like to invite you to the launch of a new research network, Object Lessons from Tibet & the Himalayas. This one-day seminar takes place on the 9 June at the University of Manchester, UK and brings together researchers working with the visual and material culture of Tibet and the Himalayas. In particular, we want to think about the roles of things in the production, loss and recovery of knowledge, both in the colonial past and the present.

This seminar will appeal to anyone interested in collecting and looting in British India, imperial knowledge production, travel writing, History of Science, the complexities of ‘local’, indigenous and Diaspora knowledge, and the representation of people and places in the museum.

Speakers include:
Prof. Clare Harris, University of Oxford
Dr. Trine Brox & Dr Miriam Koktvedgaard Zeitzen, University of Copenhagen
Dr. Diana Lange, Humboldt University Berlin
Dr. Emma Martin, University of Manchester & National Museums Liverpool

The seminar fee is £20 (includes lunch and all refreshments). Please contact Emma Martin: emma.martin-2@manchester.ac.uk if you wish to book a place. Please visit: https://objectlessonsfromtibetblog.wordpress.com/ for further details.

Seminar Programme

9th June 2017, Room 115, Samuel Alexander Blg, University of Manchester

From 9.00am
Coffee and Tea

9.30am
Welcome and Introduction
Emma Martin

9.40am
Keynote: Prof. Clare Harris (tbc)
Title: (tbc)

Panel One 10.15am – 11.15am

Knowledge Production Pt.1

Learning to Travel, Travelling to Learn: Percy Powell-Cotton in the Himalayas
Dr. Inbal Livne, Powell Cotton Museum, Kent

Mapping Tibet – Exploring material cultural heritage within shifting land-and mindscapes
Dr. Martina Wernsdörfer, Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich

Tibetan Material Culture from the Younghusband Invasion in Berlin Collections
Regina Höfer, Ethnologisches Museum and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin

Coffee Break
11.15 – 11.35am

Panel Two 11.35am – 12.35pm

Knowledge Production Pt.2

The Visual Culture of Himalayan Zoology, 1800-1900
Dr. David Lowther, University of Durham

For Whom the Bell Tolls: perspective and interconnectedness in studies of early Tibetan Buddhist material culture
Dr. Lewis Doney, British Museum

Title: tbc
Dr. Tim Myatt, Oxford

Discussion: 12.35pm – 1.00pm

Lunch 1.00pm – 2.00pm

Panel Three 2.00pm – 3.20pm

Knowledge Recovery

Curatorial conscience, collecting 1904 and beyond; new evidence from the V&A files on attitudes to objects collected during the British 1904 expedition
Dr. John Clarke, V&A Museum

Dr Thomas Alexander Wise, Dundee-born polymath: A biography of his collection of “Antiquities”
Christina Donald, The McManus, Dundee

One collection, many faces: When did the Wise Collection have its “historical moment”?
Dr. Diana Lange, Humboldt University Berlin

Short Break: 3.20 – 3.25pm

Panel Four 3.25pm – 4.05pm

Knowledge Loss

Itineraries of Loss: How Tibetan objects got lost in colonial worlds
Dr. Emma Martin, University of Manchester and National Museums Liverpool

Displaced knowledge: Prince Peter’s Tibetan collection
Dr. Miriam Koktvedgaard Zeitzen & Dr. Trine Brox, University of Copenhagen

Coffee / Discussion: 4.05pm – 4.50pm

Summing up 4.50pm – 5.00pm