• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Returning Remains: Context, Consent & Colonialism

ramonmercado

CyberPunk
Joined
Aug 19, 2003
Messages
58,109
Location
Eblana

Behind the Headlines | Returning Remains: Context, Consent, and Colonialism​

Tuesday, 21 February 2023, 7 – 8pm

An online discussion with Dr Ciaran O'Neill (TCD), Peggy King Jorde, Prof Samuel Redman (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Evi Numen (TCD), and Dr Olof Ljungström (Karolinska Institutet) organised by the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute as part of the Behind the Headlines Series.

Global conversations centred on custodianship and care of historic human remains provide the focus for the Trinity Long Room Hub’s latest Behind the Headlines discussion, which highlights the complexities and tensions surrounding the retention or reburial of human remains. As many international news sites have recently reported, Trinity is currently working with inhabitants of Inishbofin Island to address the potential return of remains taken from the island in 1890 and stored for more than a century on campus. We hope to situate this case in a broader philosophical, moral, and cultural context, and to learn from four experts who will reflect on their own experience of negotiating questions of repatriation in the museum and university sectors.

Speakers:
Peggy King Jorde
is a cultural projects consultant combining more than 30 years of experience in architecture and historic preservation projects in New York City and beyond. King Jorde served under three NYC mayors, providing comprehensive oversight of all capital construction projects specific to New York’s cultural landmarks, public art, and art museums. King Jorde took the lead in advocating and shepherding the creation of New York’s African Burial Ground Memorial and Interpretive Centre. She has recently consulted on the preservation of the African burial ground discovered on Saint Helena Islan and featured in the recent documentary The Story of Bones  (2022) .

Professor Samuel J Redman
is Professor of History and Director of Public History Program at University of Massachussetts (Amherst). His first book, Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums, was published by Harvard University Press in 2016. Bone Rooms was selected as a Choice Top-25 Outstanding Academic Title, Nature Top-20 book of 2016, and Smithsonian Top History Book of 2016. His second book, Prophets and Ghosts: The Story of Salvage Anthropology  (Harvard University Press 2021) explores the history and legacy of salvage anthropology.  

Evi Numen is the Curator of the Old Anatomy Museum, Trinity College Dublin, and previously held the position of Exhibitions Manager & Designer at the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia from 2009 to 2016. 

Dr Olof Ljungström
is a Docent (reader) in the history of science and ideas, employed by the Karolinska Institutet since 2005, to write the history of modern medical research, and to document and write the history of the institute along with it. In 2010 he published Ämnessprängarna: Karolinska Institutet och Rockefeller Foundation 1930-1945 (The Discipline Busters, under translation into English), a monograph study of a number of actors in some key decades in the history of the Karolinska's development into an internationally recognised research environment.

This panel will be chaired by Dr Ciaran O'Neill, Associate Professor in the School of Histories and Humanities.

Please register here.
https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/behind-...-consent-and-colonialism-tickets-537339194997

The Trinity Long Room Hub’s ‘Behind the Headlines’ discussion series offers background and expert analyses of current issues, drawing on the long-term perspectives of Arts & Humanities research. It aims to provide a forum that deepens understanding, combats simplification, and creates space for informed and respectful public discourse. The Trinity Long Room Hub Behind the Headlines series is supported by the John Pollard Foundation. 

Please indicate if you have any access requirements, such as ISL/English interpreting, so that we can facilitate you in attending this event. Contact: [email protected]

Campus Location: Online
Accessibility: N/A
Room: Online
Event Category: Lectures and Seminars
Type of Event: One-time event
Audience: Researchers, Postgrad, Faculty & Staff, Public
Cost: Free
Contact Name: Christina Hamilton
Contact Email: [email protected]
More info: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/behind-...-consent-and-colonialism-tickets-537339194997

https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/whats-on/details/event.php?eventid=165025198
 
Skulls heading back to Inishbofin.

A Dublin university has decided to return 400-year-old human skulls that were stolen from an island off the west coast of Ireland more than 100 years ago.

Thirteen skulls were taken from a monastery on the island of Inishbofin off the west coast of Ireland by two Trinity College-affiliated academics in 1890.

After sketching the skulls in the nook of St Colman’s monastery, considered sacred by the islanders, Alfred C Haddon and Andrew F Dixon took the skulls in the middle of the night.

Hadden’s diary entry stated that when asked by sailors to hand over the satchel, “Dixon would not give it up” and told the men it contained “poitin” – a distilled Irish alcohol.

Trinity College is formally reviewing legacy issues since its foundation in 1592, which included the request to return the skulls and whether its Berkeley Library should be renamed.

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland...-stolen-by-academics-from-island-1437164.html
 
Recorded February 21, 2023

Global conversations centred on custodianship and care of historic human remains provide the focus for the Trinity Long Room Hub’s latest Behind the Headlines discussion, which highlights the complexities and tensions surrounding the retention or reburial of human remains.

As many international news sites have recently reported, Trinity College Dublin is currently working with inhabitants of Inishbofin Island to address the potential return of remains taken from the island in 1890 and stored for more than a century on campus.

In this panel chaired by Dr Ciaran O'Neill from Trinity’s School of Histories and Humanities, we hear from Dr Olof Ljungström, the Head of Department at the Karolinska Institute (Stockholm); Peggy King Jorde, the activist behind New York City's African Burial Ground; Prof Samuel Redman, author of Bone Rooms (2016); and Evi Numen, the Curator for the Old Anatomy Museum at Trinity College Dublin.

They hope to situate this case in a broader philosophical, moral, and cultural context, and to learn from four experts who will reflect on their own experience of negotiating questions of repatriation in the museum and university sectors.

 
A related lecture.

Talking with the Dead: Narratives from The Old Anatomy Museum

Recorded 16 February 2023.

A hybrid lecture by Evi Numen (TCD) as part of the Medical and Health Humanities Seminar Series. Medical museums begun their existence as galleries of wonder, a way to celebrate God’s creations through collecting and publicly accessible display. As medical knowledge and teaching developed, medical collections moved from this quasi-religious domain to establishments of scientific research and education out of the public eye. The advent of modern imaging and other teaching technologies pushed some of these difficult-to-upkeep collections into obscurity altogether. In recent years, they are coming out of the shadows, bringing with them some difficult questions and inconvenient narratives, entwined as they are with stories and practices of a colonialist past. Others complicate our understanding of human diversity, ability, and consent, and invite us to bridge the gap between specimen and visitor. This lecture investigates that transition by tracing the past of the Old Anatomy Museum and discussing its future. How did medical education practices evolve from body snatching to body donation? What lessons can we learn from a 200-year-old skeleton in a cabinet? What can an illustration of a syphilis sufferer tell us about public health today? These are some of the questions we are called upon to grapple with, as we embark on a project to establish a medical heritage centre around a collection that spans 300 years of medical education in Ireland, and includes human remains, anatomical models, medical illustrations, and striking portraits of patients and physicians.

 
Home at last.

Out of all the anniversaries, 133 isn't the most exciting.

It doesn't have the brand recognition of a 50, 75 or even 125; it has no name, no paper, crystal or gold.

But for the people of Inishbofin, an island off the west coast of Ireland, 133 years is now a golden date worth celebrating.

Later on Sunday, a funeral Mass will take place on the island to mark the return of human remains stolen from a cemetery there 133 years ago.

Inishbofin skulls and coffin
IMAGE SOURCE,INISHBOFIN HERITAGE MUSEUM
Image caption,
Thirteen skulls and other human fragments will be reinterred on Sunday
The remains, including 13 skulls, were removed from Inishbofin in 1890 and subsequently kept at Trinity College Dublin (TCD).
In February, the university announced its intention to return the remains following a decade-long campaign by the islanders.
“I just feel so relieved and I’m so glad they’re back west," said Marie Coyne, who played an instrumental role in the saga of 'Bofin's bones.
She was speaking to BBC News NI one day after escorting the remains from Trinity College to Athenry, County Galway.
"They played ball in the end, it has happened, so it's a relief," she added.
Marie Coyne
IMAGE SOURCE, RTÉ Image caption, Marie Coyne said she was relieved to see the remains returned

Marie runs a heritage museum on the island and she first became aware of the human remains more than 10 years ago when she came across an exhibition by Dr Ciarán Walsh.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd1exnkzp12o
 
Back
Top