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innovation in research & project management

I set up curator.ie in 2010 as a vehicle for innovative curatorial projects with a strong educational component and a collaborative ethos. The emphasis gradually began to shift from contemporary visual arts and media projects to an engagement with historical social documentary photography. This started out as a search for “authentic” representation of folklife in Ireland in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, which inevitably involved engaging with the communities who had been documented.

*www.curator.ie on location: Peadar Mór, Ciarán Walsh and Muiris Ó Conghaille taking a break during filming on Inis Meáin, 2014.*

Michael Faherty, Inis Meain, 1890-1, from the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey (1891-1903). The photograph shows a group of islanders in traditional homespuns. — Alfred Cort Haddon, 1892, Michael Faherty, and two women, Inishmaan. The photograph was taken during an ethnographic survey of the Aran Islands off the western coast of Ireland. Haddon commented that ‘Faherty refused to be measured, and the women would not even tell us their names.’ (Photo: Trinity College Dublin).

in 2009, Felicity O’Mahony, a librarian in TCD, showed me a series of photograph albums that were compiled by Charles R. Browne in 1897, which were held in the Manuscript Library in TCD. Everything changed … utterly … as they say. Dáithí de Mórdha and I developed the “Irish Headhunter Project” in 2012 and this led to a four year research and development contract with the Irish Research Council in 2015. This contract covered two main areas of practically oriented research.

The first was a detailed investigation of the “skull measuring business” in Ireland in the 1890s, that is a programme of ethnographic surveys which were conducted by the Anthropological Laboratory that was established by the University Of Dublin, Trinity College (TCD) and the Royal Irish Academy in 1892. This centred on ethnographic experiments conducted by Haddon in the Aran Islands in 1890.

The second involves placing this research into the public domain in a creative programme of public engagement on issues relating to body, image, and ethnicity, a project which, in many ways, is shaped by the anti-racism activism that Haddon developed between 1890 and 1895. During that period, Haddon used slide shows–performed ethnographies–as an effective mechanism for an affective engagement with geographical remote and culturally distant civilisations.

The Haddon-Dixon photographs. The negatives were exposed in the Aran Islands in 1890 and were discovered on a shelf underneath the anatomy theatre in 2014, along with various pieces of photographic equipment.

The shelf underneath the “Old” Anatomy Theatre in TCD on which the Haddon-Dixon negatives were discovered by Siobhán Ward, TCD, in 2014. The space on the right is the “Skull Passage,” a highly evocative space that contains the anthropological (skull measuring) collections assembled by Haddon, Dixon and other in the 19th century

The entire project is centred around a collection of photographic negatives that were discovered under the “Old” Anatomy Theatre in TCD in 2014. The photographs were taken by Andrew Francis Dixon during a fishing survey in 1890, but they represent a foundational event in the development of a politically radical form of visual ethnography by Alfred Cort Haddon.

Work commenced in Maynooth University in February 2015. TCD joined the project in 2016 and Kimmage Development Studies Centre (KDSC) came on board as enterprise partners later in the same year. KDSC was absorbed into Maynooth University in 2018 and I became a fellow of the Shanahan Research Centre for the remainder of the project.

*The Dublin Anthropometric Laboratory in 2015 and 1891. Many of the original instruments were found in 2015. The skulls were stored in a corridor at the back of the anatomy theatre.*

“Fieldwork” commenced in 2016 and, since then, has been split between work on the anthropological collections in the “Old” Anatomy Building in TCD and the Haddon papers in Cambridge; mainly in Cambridge University Library, but extending to the Haddon Library and the photographic collections of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Research was completed in 2017 and the last two years or so have been spent writing it up. This represents a major revision of the history of Anglo-Irish anthropology and the theoretical assumptions underpinning it.

Ciarán Walsh of www.curator.ie at work on 'Haddon in Ireland' in Cambridge University Library. — *Ciarán Walsh at work on ‘Haddon in Ireland’ in Cambridge University Library.*

Haddon developed a series of illustrated lectures on the subject of the Aran Islands between 1890 and 1895. This lecture was given in 1895, when the eviction of islanders from their homes generated widespread outrage in the context of a general election that was fought over home rule. The Hexham lecture illustrates the extent to which Haddon’s work was less concerned with “survival” anthropology and more concerned with the survival of “village communities” under pressure from colonists. In September 1895, Haddon attacked the anti-home rule strategies of Tories at a meeting of the British Association in Ipswich.

post-doc: converting research into activism and advocacy

The Irish Research Council funded this work under its programme of employment based research. A key part of the project has been to work with an enterprise partner to find innovative ways of placing the results of my research into the public domain. My work with KDSC focussed on the development of online educational resources using visual technologies and networks and this will feed into strategies for creative public engagement.

The need for engagement was obvious, given the many myths that surround “Old” Anatomy and the historical collections associated with the skull measuring business in Ireland. This came to head with a public campaign to have the skeleton of the Cornelius Magrath, Irish Giant, buried. This led to a collaboration with the film maker Chris Nikkel and Brendan Holland, who created the 21st century version of the ethnographies performed by Haddon.

*Public engagement at work: BBC Northern Ireland recording an interview between Brendan Holland and Martina Hennessy for the a documentary entitled “The Giant Gene.” It was produced by Chris Nikkel and broadcast in June 2018.*

It was equally obvious that the politically radical and formally innovative photo-ethnographic practice developed by Haddon in Ireland had been completely missed by historians of disciplinary anthropology, who tended to focus on race, bracketed by evolution and empire. This produced what can only be described as disciplinary folklore, which was passed down by the historicists who laid the foundations for a “modern” history of “modern” anthropology in the 1980s and 1990s, which still influences the historiographical treatment of anthropology, ethnology, and folk studies as practiced in Ireland in the 1890s.

This was first challenged in public – ironically enough – in a presentation to a conference on Folklore and the Nation, which was organised by the Folklore Society in March 2019. This will be featured in a collection of essays being edited by Matthew Cheeseman and Carina Hart, which will be published by Routledge.

The conference programme continues with the “vanished knowledge” project, which involves creating a panel for Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present and Future, a conference being jointly organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI), the Royal Geographical Society, the British Academy, the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at SOAS (University of London), and the Department for Africa, Oceania and the Americas in the British Museum. It will run from 4 – 7 JUNE 2020.

*The burning of the Amazon rainforest in Mato Grosso state, Brazil. Photo: Mayke Toscano/AFP/Getty Images &* *The Guardian*

“Vanishing knowledge” was a phrase coined by Haddon as code for the human and cultural consequences of genocide by habitat destruction after an anti-colonial speech in Ipswich in 1895 had been widely criticised. This project revives and reconfigures the idea of “survival” as an issue of urgency for anthropologists / sociologists and geographers (read more).

This will provide a context for a major revamp of the curator.ie website, Other projects are in development, but it is too soon to reveal the details. Nonetheless, the project has now moved from research to implementation and implementation looks like it will involve a lot of advocacy and activism.

Ciarán Walsh, September 2019.

*A glass plate negative of a photograph of a “village community” that was taken by Andrew Francis Dixon in the company of Alfred Cort Haddon in the Aran Island in 1890.*

*A photograph taken by Charles R. Browne on the Great Blasket Island in 1897. The man in the middle is Tomás Criomhtain, the author known as An t’Oileanach (The Islander).*

*Gearóid Cheaist Ó Catháin and Daithi De Mordha standing in front of a photograph taken of Gearóid shortly after the Great Blasket Island was evacuated (1953).*

Siobhan Ward, Chief Technical Officer, Anatomy, TCD, in the 'Old' Anatomy building in TCD. iobhan is holding a plaster cast of the skull of the musician Turlough O' Carolan. O'Carolan's skull used to adorn his grave in Roscommon before it was acquired and cast by Grattan of Belfast. The photo shows Siobhan in blue scrubs in the 'Old' Anatomy Dept. Many artifacts from the Anthropometry Laboratory (1891-1903) are visible in the background. — Siobhan Ward, Chief Technical Officer, Anatomy, TCD, in the ‘Old’ Anatomy building in TCD. Siobhan is holding a plaster cast of the skull of the musician Turlough O’ Carolan. O’Carolan’s skull used to adorn his grave in Roscommon before it was acquired and cast by Grattan of Belfast.

Skull and Camera 2013: the photograph shows The installation of the 'Irish Headhunter' exhibition in the National Museum of Ireland, Castlebar, Co. Mayo. The photography shows a skull and a camera on a display case with men hanging pictures in the background. The photograph was published by Ciarán Walsh of www.curator.ie, a heritage project management company based in Ballyheigue, Tralee, Co. Kerry, Ireland. It was exhibited all over Ireland and in England as part of the exhibition, The Irish Headhunter, the photograph albums of Charles R. Browne' (2012/2013). 'The Irish Headhunter' project (anthropology and photography) was developed in association with TCD, Triniity College Dublin, The National Museum of Ireland, Royal Irish Academy, Cambridge University, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology Cambridge, National University of Ireland Maynooth, Oireachtas na Gaeilge and Áras Éanna, the Áran Islands. Funded by the Heritage Council of Ireland and the OPW (Office of Public Works) through The Great Blasket Centre, Dingle. — *Installation of the Irish Headhunter Project in the National Museum of Country Life, Castlebar.*

www.curator.ie is managed by Ciarán Walsh.

It was designed by Rob Condon of Kerrynet Solutions.

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