The student will normally undertake two weeks of skills development training per year, and would be very welcome to join College of Arts initiatives such as the Decolonise Glasgow and Collections Arts Labs.
The College offers an extensive Postgraduate Skills Development Programme, which is delivered within the national Researcher Development Framework. The College of Arts has an international reputation for the quality of its research, and values the contributions that its one thousand research students make to this vibrant research culture. At the University of Glasgow, the student will be a member of the College of Arts Graduate School and, within that, the School of Humanities. Over the course of the PhD, the student will benefit from career development activities at NMS, the University of Glasgow and external bodies such as SGSAH. The student will also work with supervisors to organise a workshop/engagement event interrogating colonial and imperial ideologies in ancient Egyptian and Sudanese museum displays. In the student’s third year, they will complete a six-month placement in the World Cultures Department at NMS, gaining hands-on collections, documentation, and provenance research experience. The project will reconstruct a sense of these historic displays and how they were promoted to and received by the public. The research will also draw on archival material identified as part of NMS’ 2019-2020 review of Egyptian collections held by museums across Scotland. This provides a rich body of primary sources to study how displays were conceived and developed. NMS holds almost 6000 ancient Egyptian and Sudanese objects, as well as extensive archives pertaining to past displays and collecting practices. This project will take advantage of access to historic museum collections and archives. How did museums’ presentation of ideas about Egyptian rule, social structure, art and architecture, empire-building, and trade compare with how Britain and its relationship with the world was presented to educate the public?.How were displays influenced by other international Egyptological displays or by international exhibitions in Glasgow and London, and were the displays similar/different to displays of other colonially acquired material or Scottish material?.gender, social background, expertise) influence their arrangements and interpretations? archaeological expeditions, donors) and the identities of curators (e.g. How did the sources of the material (e.g.How were narratives, supplementary images, replicas, reproductions, and display furniture/architecture used to conjure an idea of ‘ancient Egypt’ amongst audiences?.How did displays of ancient Egyptian material reflect and reinforce concepts of identity, race, nationalism, social hierarchy, imperialism, and colonial thought?.The project will address the following research questions: Furthermore, it will address key gaps regarding how elite narratives were privileged, how displays were intended to educate visitors about taste, social roles, and class structure, and the ways museum displays served to enhance the status of contributing archaeologists and donors. A focus on Scottish museums will offer insights into the impact of imperial ideologies outside of London and the role of Scottish national interests. This constitutes the first research project to use methodologies from Museum Studies to investigate how existing ideologies in British society and Britain’s involvement in empire shaped displays about Egypt, and the ‘Orient’ more broadly, and the role museums played in educating the public about ancient Egypt as an exemplar of ‘civilisation’.
Offered in collaboration with National Museums Scotland, this PhD project will examine the history of displays of ancient Egyptian material in Scottish museums to determine how these were influenced by and served to reinforce imperialist, nationalist, and elitist thought, and challenge the persistence of these narratives in museums today. Museums continue to be confined by these narratives, and the weight of audiences’ expectations of traditional museum displays. Displays of this material helped create and disseminate a vision of ancient Egypt made in the reflection of the British Empire. UK collections of Egyptian and Sudanese material came into being through colonialism during an age of empire.