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Twenty five photographs that change the history of anthropology

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on October 30, 2023 – 1:08 pm

Filed under Anthropology, Curatorial Projects, Photography, Research

A. F. Dixon, Untitled, 1890. Digital print from scan of silver gelatine, glass-plate negative (Ciarán Rooney, 2019). The original negative is held in in the School of Medicine, Trinity College, University of Dublin.
© curator.ie

‘Haddon and the Aran Islands’ is an exhibition of twenty five photographs that builds on Ciarán Walsh’s newly published book on Alfred Cort Haddon’s work as a photographer and anthropologist in Ireland in the 1890s. A Very English Savage will be launched in the Royal Anthropological Institute on 31 October 2023. More at Ballymaclinton.

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‘Haddon and the Aran Islands’ exhibition in Royal Anthropological Institute | London | Oct 2023

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on October 11, 2023 – 8:54 am

Filed under Anthropology, Curatorial Projects, Photography

A. F. Dixon. 1890. Untitled. Digital print of silver gelatine, glass-plate negative (Ciarán Walsh and Ciarán Rooney, 2019). The original negative is held in the School of Medicine, Trinity College, University of Dublin. © curator.ie.

I can’t tell you all the excursions we made in Aran. it wd be as tedious for you to read as for me to write suffice it to say that Dixon & I left very little unseen & what with sketches & photographs we have a good deal on paper.

A. C. Haddon describes the beginning of visual anthropology in a journal he kept aboard the S. S. Fingal during a survey of fishing ground off the west coast of Ireland in 1890

Previously unseen photographs of the Aran Islands feature in an exhibition Ciarán Walsh and Andrei Nacu curated for the Royal Anthropological Institute in London. ‘Haddon and the Aran Islands’ opens on 15 October 2023 and features twenty five photographs that are organised around Haddon’s first ethnographic account of the Aran Islands, which he presented as a slideshow in Dublin at the end of 1890.

The photographs challenge the idea that anthropologists like Haddon were, by default almost, preoccupied with evolution bracketed by race and colonialism while their counterparts in cultural nationalism and literary modernism became fascinated by Island dwellers. John Millington Synge’s writing is usually presented as the antithesis of Haddon’s science but this exhibition points to a common interest in social documentary photography that manifests a deeper connection between the ‘Head-hunter’ and the ‘Playboy‘.

Haddon and Dixon spent a week in the islands in 1890 and they documented the extraordinary glaciokarst landscape, the people, their way of life, customs, folklore and numerous archaeological sites. On his return to Dublin Haddon used ten of Dixon’s photographs in a slideshow titled ‘The Aran Islands’, the first of six slideshows that included ‘Ethnographical Studies in the West of Ireland’ in the Anthropological Institute in 1894. He renamed this ‘On the People of Western Ireland and their Mode of Life’ when he showed it at a meeting of the anthropological section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science later in the year. Given the high profile this topic gained in the Home Rule crisis in 1895, the change registers a the overlap between Haddon’s photo-ethnography, his anticolonial activism and the Home rule crisis.

Dixon took over fifty photographs while working for Haddon on a fishing survey in 1890. Haddon sent a box of the glass plate negatives to R. J. Welch, a photographer in Belfast, to be processed as lantern slides. On their return, Dixon seems to have put them on a shelf under the ‘Old’ Anatomy theatre in TCD, where they lay undiscovered until 2014. Dixon’s camera was lost, but the camera shown here is a kit-built quarter-plate from the same period and matches the negative holders Dixon used (foreground). In 2019, Walsh commissioned Ciarán Rooney (Filmbank) to print a new set of photographs from digital scans of the negatives (photo Ciarán Walsh).

Haddon summarised his photo-ethnographic experiments in a manifesto published in 1899 and re-issued in 1912, but the document entered modern anthropology as it was becoming what Margaret Mead later called ‘a discipline of words’. Furthermore, a misplaced historiographical focus on Haddon’s career in zoology obscured his interest in art and photography and so masked the beginning of visual anthropology.

This exhibition brings us back to that beginning: Haddon’s discovery of ‘instantaneous’ photography in the Aran Islands in 1890. It features ten new prints from Dixon’s negatives of Haddon’s slideshow and these are contextualised by photographs from various archives in Dublin, Belfast and Cambridge that point to Haddon’s influences and impact, most of which have never been exhibited before. They include digital prints of the oldest surviving photograph of Skellig Michael (1868), a study of folk dance by Clara Patterson (1893) and a still from Haddon’s film of the last dance of the Malu Zogo-Le (1898). Synge first met Haddon in 1886 and and is represented by a photograph that registers the latter’s influence, which, in turn, indexes Haddon’s extraordinary modernism.

Walsh explores these developments in more detail in an RAI Research Seminar in the Royal Anthropological Institute on 31 October 2023 after which his book Alfred Cort Haddon: A Very English Savage will be launched. For details / registration see the events page on the Institute’s website.

J. M. Synge. 1898. Islanders of Inishmaan. Digital print from scan of glass plate negative (Timothy Keefe, Sharon Sutton, Gill Whelan 2009). TCD MS11332_28_b courtesy of the Board of Trinity College, University of Dublin

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a small book that will change a lot: a very English savage takes a step closer to publication …

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on April 21, 2023 – 2:53 pm

Filed under Anthropology, Curatorial Projects, Publications

Haddon, a radically modern anthropologist, sits next to Dr Rev Dr Samuel, President of the Royal Irish Academy in the cover photo of the book Alfred Cort Haddon, a very English Savage by Ciarán Walsh, a curator who completed a PhD in the history and philosophy of anthropology in 2020. The cover indicates that the book is part of the series called Anthropology's Ancestors, which is edited by Aleksandar Bošković for Berghahn Books of New York and Oxford. The cover is a detail of a photograph taken in 1885 of a group of natural scientists on board a research vessel chartered for a survey of fishing grounds off the south west coast of Ireland. Haddon cuts a striking figure. He is dressed like a pirate amongst suited academics, a man of action whose natural domain was fieldwork. Sitting to his left is the Haughton, a fellow home rule supporter with a shared who shared a family history of anti-slavery and humanitarian action.

Prof Alfred Cort Haddon sits next to Dr Rev Dr Samuel, President of the Royal Irish Academy, and a fellow home rule supporter who also shared a family history of anti-slavery and humanitarian activism (with permission of the Royal Irish Academy © RIA).

Berghahn Books has just provided me with a typeset copy of my book on Haddon, which is due out in September as the fifth volume in the series on Anthropology’s Ancestors edited by Aleksandar Bošković. Details are available on the Berghahn website, and I discuss the choice of title and other aspects of this project in my Ballymaclinton blog.

Anon., Dredging party, 1885, with friends [plate 16] sitting, left to right: A. C. Haddon (in front of light suit), S. Haughton, W. S. Green, C. B. Ball; standing: Sir D’Arcy W. Thompson (light suit), Sir R. S. Ball (yachting cap), Valentine Ball (at end of trawl), 1885. Digital scan of silver gelatine print. Permission of the Royal Irish Academy © RIA.

“Old” Anatomy goes live for Science Week 2018

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on November 13, 2018 – 11:14 am

Filed under Anthropology, Comment, Education, Research, Science Week

Going Wilde in “Old” Anatomy. William Wilde’s collection of skulls goes on display in TCD as a backdrop for the filming of “Growing, Up Live”

The skulls have been taken out of storage and put on display as the “Old” Anatomy Museum in TCD goes “live” for three nights during Science Week 2018. The Museum has been transformed into a studio for Growing Up, Live. It is being filmed in front of a live studio audience and the programme makers will “be treating the audience to live science experiments every night” which, RTE promises, “will unlock our understanding of a human lifetime.’

The Anatomy Museum is a really interesting setting for a show like this. Historically, dissections were done in front of a live audience. That won’t happen in “Growing Up, Live” but the audience will be surrounded by the results of 300 years of anatomical research. The Museum is home to a collection of anatomical and medical specimens that was built up over 300 years of medical education in Trinity College, University of Dublin, much of which was “re-discovered” when “Old” Anatomy Dept was decommissioned in 2014 and the School of Medicine move to the TBSI building on Pearse St.

Angela Scanlon adopts the traditional pose of the Anatomist – skull in hand – in “Old” Anatomy in preparation for the filming of “Growing Up, Live.”

The live broadcast marks a turning point in the process of opening the least known and most interesting museum in Dublin to the public. In March 2017, Joe Duffy created some controversy when he called for the skeleton of Cornelius Magrath, the Irish Giant, to be removed from display in the mistaken belief the Magrath’s body had been robbed, dissected in secret, and his skeleton put on display in 1760. I was working on the collection at the time and found evidence that Magrath had in fact been in the care of Trinity School of Medicine when he died.

The controversy died but there was a some nervousness about opening the collections to the public as a result. Brendan Holland, another Irish Giant, came to the rescue. He filmed part of the documentary “The Giant Gene” in the Anatomy Museum and went public on the most difficult question of all: as a giant, how would he feel it his skeleton was put on display? Brendan didn’t have a problem with that, given the contribution that historic specimens like Magrath continue to make to medical research into conditions like gigantism.

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

2016. The Anatomy Museum operating as a mixture of conservation workshop and anthropological “field.” This is some of the material that was discovered in 2014 and needed to be sorted, catalogued, and stored in preparation for conservation and display. The anthropological material is visible in the foreground.

The use of the space as a studio marks another turning point. An enormous amount of material was discovered in the process of decommissioning the “Old” Anatomy Dept in 2014. Much of this was in tea-chests and crates but there was a lot of material stored under the old theatre and in every nook and cranny of the building. This included a really important collection of photographs taken in the Aran Islands in 1890, shortly before the Anatomy Dept established a small Anthropology Dept and opened an anthropometric (the measurement of humans) laboratory.

A photograph taken by Andrew F. Dixon and Alfred Cort Haddon in Dún Chonnchubhair, Inis Meáin, in 1890. The negative on the left still has the masking that was used to create the effect of a clear sky. The image on the right is an inverted scan of the original, which is called a positive.

That is where curator.ie got involved. I received funding from the Irish Research Council (research.ie) to work on collections associated with the Anthropometric Laboratory and its programme of ethnographic surveys in the west of Ireland. The project was a joint venture of Maynooth University, TCD School of Medicine, and Kimmage Development Studies Centre, now Shanahan Research Centre.

As a curator and a student of anthropology, I did my fieldwork in “Old” Anatomy. Most of the material discovered in 2014 was stored in the Anatomy Museum and it took the best part of two years to go through it and organise suitable storage in the nooks and crannies from whence it came. The plan, all along, was to restore the museum as a public space.

The filming of “The Giant Gene” was a key part of a strategy to make the collection visible and to engage the public in a conversation about the contemporary significance of “Old” Anatomy, whether that is the Skeleton of Magrath, the huge range of medical education material, or the ethnographic material associated with the Anthropological Dept.

The filming of “Growing Up, Live” is on a different scale altogether, given the reach of Science Week and the presence in the museum of a studio audience. RTE publicists have described the “studio” as an amazing Anatomy Museum” and it will be very interesting to see how the audience engages with the various collections.

This is the space to watch during Science Week.

The history of the British Isles as represented in skulls. Ethnologists in the mid-nineteenth century believed that they could find traces of the various invasions of Ireland by comparing the shape of ancient skulls.

To Follow: The Skull Measuring Business: the work of the Dublin Anthropometric Anthropometric Laboratory (1891-1903).

Research Update | October 2018

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on October 3, 2018 – 1:59 pm

Filed under Anthropology, Research

Reading Haddon …

Four years ago, I was given the job of finding out what exactly was going on in the Dublin Anthropometric Laboratory, which was established in TCD in 1891. My research has focussed on the Laboratory’s programme of ethnographic surveys in the west of Ireland, which were conducted by “head-hunters” Alfred Cort Haddon and Charles R. Browne between 1892 and 1900.

The main question is this: what do the surveys tell us about the development of (1) social documentary photography in Ireland and (2) a western imaginary based on island life in the west of Ireland? My research also considers the ethical and practical implications of placing material from the laboratory–including anatomical specimens–into the public domain, especially in the context of debates about the relation between body, image, and identity in contemporary Ireland.

BBC Northern Ireland on location in “Old” Anatomy TCD in 2018. Brendan Holland and Martina Hennessy, TCD School of Medicine, discuss the relevance of historic anatomical/anthropological specimens to current medical research (see the Giant Gene)

Four years on the project is entering its final phase. The tricky task of converting extensive work on primary sources in Dublin and Cambridge is well underway and slowly taking shape as a text. This text is structured around the idea of murderous, little facts from the hidden spaces of anthropology in Ireland. These facts have produced some interesting results; not least the need for some radical new thinking about the history of anthropology as a whole.

Ugly Little Facts: Aidan Baker, Librarian of the Haddon Library in Cambridge, with a collection of papers relating to the Aran Islands. The documents were placed in an envelope in 1913 and “lost.” They were rediscovered in 2013 in a search for Haddon’s notes and/or other papers relating to “The Ethnography of the Aran Islands, County Galway” (Haddon & Browne 1893).

Murderous Little Facts

The origin of this trope–ugly little facts–comes from an unlikely source. Thomas Henry Huxley is credited with coining the phrase in a conversation recalled by Francis Galton in his memoirs (1908). Herbert Spencer revealed in conversation that he once wrote a tragedy. Huxley declared that the ‘catastrophe had to be a ‘beautiful theory killed by a nasty ugly little fact.’

My theory–or historiographical framework perhaps–is that the disciplinary history of anthropology operates around a foundational trope. Haddon is represented as taking anthropology out of the armchair and into the field in 1898; after he had escaped from the Darwinian backwater that was Dublin in the 1890s. That claim is not supported by facts in the Haddon papers and related sources but, repeated often enough, it has become a form of disciplinary folklore that has compressed the history of anthropology and circumscribed narratives like that of the Dublin Anthropometric Laboratory.

Reading Haddon: A small section of the Haddon Papers in Cambridge University Library.

The strategy I have adopted in response is to use overlooked primary sources as “tropocidal” facts; using ugly, little facts gleaned from the forgotten spaces of anthropology to kill off the armchair trope and suggest some alternative narratives. The Dublin Anthropometric Laboratory, in this scenario, becomes (1) the site of a struggle for disciplinary authority between conservative (biological) and radical (sociological) elements within “organised” anthropology in the 1890s, (2) an agent of the development of an equally radical, photo-ethnographic practice in fieldwork associated with the Laboratory and (3) the starting point for John Millington Synge’s exploration of peasant life in the West of Ireland.

Photography as ethnography: a photograph taken by Browne on the Great Blasket Island in 1897. The man in the middle is Tomás Ó Criomhtain, An tOileánach, one of the most celebrated figures of the Blasket Island Community and an important figure in folklore studies in Ireland. Photograph courtesy of the Board of TCD.

Forgotten Spaces

This study is grounded in the discovery of artefacts, records, and photographs associated with the Dublin Anthropometric Laboratory, which prompted a new reading of Haddon’s association with it. In 2014 Siobhán Ward of TCD started unpacking tea chests containing a substantial collection of historical material from the School of Anatomy. This material included specimens, instruments, records, paper and a spectacular collection of glass plate negatives dating from 1890. This material had ‘disappeared’ in 1948 when it was placed in long-term storage under the theatre in the “Old” Anatomy Building.

Reconstruction of the anthropological collection began in February 2016 and the contents of the tea chests have since been recorded, sorted, and tallied with related material in other collections in Ireland and UK. It wasn’t long before a gap opened up between the conventional history of pre-modern anthropology in Ireland and the ugly little facts —documentary and material— that had emerged from “Old” Anatomy.

“Unpacking” the Dublin Anthropometric Laboratory in 2016. An early photograph showing the anatomical and anthropological material discovered in the “Old” Anatomy building in 2014. The records of the Laboratory and associated artefacts are visible in the foreground. They include the schedules of measurements taken in the Aran Islands in 1892, Daniel J. Cunningham’s cast of the cranial topography of a chimpanzee, and some of the psychometric instruments designed by Francis Galton.

Finally …

“Unpacking” the Laboratory has become, unexpectedly, a confrontation with the historiography of anthropology. This has meant spending just over two years reading what Haddon wrote – rather than reading about what Haddon was thought to have done – and this has produced some interesting new narratives.

This part of the project will conclude in 2019 … hopefully.

Ciarán Walsh | Oct 3, 2018

The Skeleton of the Irish Giant, Cornelius Magrath.

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on March 3, 2017 – 12:00 pm

Filed under Anthropology, Comment, Heritage, Research

A reproduction of the portrait of the Irish Giant, Cornelius Magrath. The portrait was painted in Venice in 1757 by the Italian artist Pietro Longhi, when Magrath was 20 years of age. It shows Magrath being viewed by a group of Venetians in carnival bauta costumes, one of whom is wearing a mask called a larva. A man walks under Migrates outstretched arm.He is much taller than any one else in the room and, yet, Margate towers over him. Magarth died three years later and his body was sold to the School of Anatomy in Dublin University, Trinity College. It was dissected and the articulated skeleton remains as part of an historic collection of anatomy specimens, which is currently being curated by Ciarán Walsh of curator.ie.

Pietro Longhi, 1757, “True portrait of the Giant Cornelio Magrat the Irishman; he came to Venice in the year 1757; born 1st January 1737, he is 7 feet tall and weighs 420 pounds. Painted on commission from the Noble Gentleman Giovanni Grimani dei Servi, Patrician of Venice.” Museo di Rezzonico, Venice. Photograph: Osvaldo Böhm.

The Skeleton of The Irish Giant, Cornelius Magrath is held by the School of Anatomy in Dublin University, Trinity College (TCD). It is the most famous item in a historic collection of anatomy specimens, records, and instruments that is held in the ‘Old’ Anatomy Building. The building was decommissioned in 2014 and the collection is being resolved as part of post-grad research programme managed jointly by the School of Medicine TCD, Maynooth University, Kimmage Development Studies Centre, and funded by the Irish Research Council (IRC).

I am employed as a full-time researcher on the project and resolving ethical issues relating to the retention of human remains is a major part of the work in hand. Indeed, the research proposal had to pass rigorous ethical approval procedures in Maynooth University, the School of Medicine TCD, and the IRC before I could get access to the ‘old’ Anatomy building and the collections held therein, which include the skeleton of Cornelius Magrath.

The skeleton is “in the news” following calls for Magrath’s remains to be buried. The controversy kicked off on the History Show on RTE Radio 1. It was picked up by chat show host Joe Duffy on Monday. Duffy argued that TCD should bury the skeleton of Cornelius Magrath because it was taken in a ‘body snatching’ raid on Magrath’s wake. Since then a debate of sorts has been taking place on the show.

The problem here is that there is no evidence that the body snatching story, however entertaining, is true. Magrath died on 16th May 1760 but the only contemporary account of his death was most likely written by either Robert Robinson, Professor of Anatomy in TCD, or Dr. George Cleghorn, the University anatomist. It is a rather enigmatic account, stating only that “Upon death, his body was carried to the Dissecting House.” (see Daniel J. Cunningham’s 1891 report to the Royal Irish Academy).

Magrath was dying of a wasting disease and it is clear from the Robinson/Cleghorn account that he was receiving medical attention at the time of his death. It records that Magrath’s “complexion was miserably pale and sallow; his pulses very quick at times for a man of his extraordinary height; and his legs were swollen.” Elsewhere, it states that his pulse beat almost sixty times a minutes “on his arrival here.” It sounds like Magrath was being cared for in the School of Medicine TCD when he died.

The body snatching legend has it that Magrath was being waked when medical students spiked the porter and made off with his body, which was immediately dissected in secret. Such a sensational body snatching could not have escaped notice and, furthermore, the dissection was both public knowledge and uncontroversial. Historians of anatomy in TCD have always believed that the body was paid for by Cleghorn and that the acquisition of the body was legitimate and ethical by the standards of the day. The problem here is that there is no documentary evidence of Magrath having consented to dissection or the permanent display of his skeleton.

That brings us to the contemporary issue of retention or burial. The report of the Working Group on Human Remains in Museum Collections (WGHR), published in the UK in 2003, acknowledged that human remains in collections “represent a unique and irreplaceable resource for the legitimate pursuance of scientific and other research” (p. 28) and concludes: “The Working Group feels that there is much merit in including museum collections of human remains within the regulatory structure proposed by the DH for health authorities and hospitals.” (p. 81).

Supervision by the Inspector of Anatomy of the ‘Old’ Anatomy collections in TCD covers the issue of regulation in Ireland in terms of the retention of Magrath’s skeleton as part of a historical scientific collection. This leaves the burial of Magrath’s remains at the discretion of the college authorities; which means that any decision will have to deal with public perception as to the “morality” of retaining identifiable human remains in collections of scientific material. That is deeply problematic, and Duffy’s attempt to frame the issue in body snatching folklore is distorting what should be a valuable and timely debate.

For more see: http://wp.me/p56Bmf-eP

Ciarán Walsh elected fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on August 4, 2015 – 1:28 pm

Filed under Anthropology, Education, Research

Ciarán Walsh has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute. This follows his pioneering work on the Irish Ethnographic Survey and the impact this had on the early development of anthropology in Ireland and the UK. Walsh first presented this material at a conference on anthropology and photography in the British Museum in 2014. In 2015 he presented an update on his research as part of the Fellows seminar series in the Institute in London, along with his research partner Dr. Jocelyne Dudding of Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (CUMAA). He will present a further paper on the connection between the Irish Ethnographic Survey and the institutional development of the RAI at a conference in December 2015. This will be based on new work that has been done as part of his postgraduate research in Maynooth University (Anthropology).

RAI Research Seminar: Walsh & Dudding, RAI RESEARCH SEMINAR SEMINAR SERIES AT THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE Haddon in Ireland, reconstructing the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey Ciarán Walsh, Maynooth University Dr Joe Dudding, Arch and Anth Museum, Cambridge Wednesday 8 April at 5.30 pm This illustrated talk outlines a project to reconstruct the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey that was established by Haddon in 1891 under the umbrella of the British Ethnographic Survey. The Irish Survey was overshadowed by subsequent developments in Cambridge / Torres but, unlike the British Survey, it was active 'in the field' for almost a decade. The records of the Survey were dispersed over collections in Ireland and the UK where they have remained uncatalogued and largely overlooked for 120 years. Recent research has however, uncovered manuscripts, photographs and artifacts (the contents of Haddon's Anthropometric Laboratory in Dublin for instance) that have the capacity to change our understanding of the early development of Anthropology in Ireland and the UK. More work needs to be done and the role played by the RAI in particular in the establishment by Haddon of the Survey and the Laboratory in Dublin needs to be examined. This event is free, but tickets must be booked. To book tickets please go to http://walshdudding.eventbrite.co.uk Location : Royal Anthropological Institute, London

Jocelyne Dudding (Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology) and Ciarán Walsh (Curator.ie and Maynooth University) .

Royal Anthropological Institute Research Seminar: Walsh & Dudding

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on April 8, 2015 – 11:35 am

Filed under Anthropology, Heritage, Research

Jocelyne Dudding (Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology) and Ciarán Walsh (Curator.ie and Maynooth University) .

RAI RESEARCH SEMINAR

SEMINAR SERIES AT THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE

Haddon in Ireland:

reconstructing the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey

Ciarán Walsh, Curator.ie and Maynooth University
Dr Joe Dudding, Arch and Anth Museum, Cambridge

Wednesday 8 April at 5.30 pm

This illustrated talk outlines a project to reconstruct the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey that was established by Haddon in 1891 under the umbrella of the British Ethnographic Survey. The Irish Survey was overshadowed by subsequent developments in Cambridge / Torres but, unlike the British Survey, it was active ‘in the field’ for almost a decade. The records of the Survey were dispersed over collections in Ireland and the UK where they have remained uncatalogued and largely overlooked for 120 years. Recent research has however, uncovered manuscripts, photographs and artifacts (the contents of Haddon’s Anthropometric Laboratory in Dublin for instance) that have the capacity to change our understanding of the early development of Anthropology in Ireland and the UK. More work needs to be done and the role played by the RAI in particular in the establishment by Haddon of the Survey and the Laboratory in Dublin needs to be examined.

Information: http://walshdudding.eventbrite.co.uk

Location : Royal Anthropological Institute
50 Fitzroy Street
London
W1T 5BT
United Kingdom

Major research proposal endorsed by NUI Maynooth

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on August 9, 2014 – 4:37 pm

Filed under Anthropology, Education, Heritage, Research

Mark Maguire, Ciarán Walsh , Nicola Reynolds and Steve Coleman

Mark Maguire, Head of Anthropology NUI Maynooth, Ciarán Walsh , Nicola Reynolds, President of thr Anthropological Society NUIM and Steve Coleman, NUIM at the opening of the Headhunter exhibition in NUI Maynooth in October 2013.

A major research proposal prepared by Ciarán Walsh for the Irish Research Council’s (IRC) Employment Based Post-graduate Programme has been endorsed by the National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUIM) and now proceeds to the IRC for evaluation and adjudication. The proposal builds on the work that Walsh has been doing on the ‘Haddon in Ireland Project’ and involves a 4 year post-graduate research project supervised by Mark Maguire of NUIM in partnership with Abarta Audio Guides, a small heritage services company operated by Neil Jackman and Róisín Burke.

Neil Jackman of Abarta Audio Guides: http://abartaaudioguides.com/about-us

The ‘Haddon in Ireland’ research project brings together public research (NUI Maynooth), private sector innovation (Abarta Audio, Clonmel) and a researcher with a proven track record (Ciaran Walsh) to reopen and reexamine the history of human science in the British isles.

Anthropometry Inisbofin 6007

This project aims to explore the Irish Ethnographic Survey, an attempt to reveal the origins of the Irish ‘race’ undertaken by scientists from Ireland and the UK between 1891 and 1903. Among them was the famous AC Haddon. This was the beginning of ‘scientific’ Anthropology but it was overshadowed by subsequent developments in Cambridge. The records were ‘lost,’ dispersed over collections in Ireland and the UK where they have remained uncatalogued and largely overlooked for 120 years.

The primary aim to reconstruct that archive and place it in the public domain. The central question is how that can be achieved, given that the material is spread over a dozen institutions in 4 jurisdictions. We will look to the latest interactive technology for solutions.

We propose to create a transnational network that digitally links collections Dublin, Cambridge, London, Edinburgh and Belfast. We will develop interactive tools that will provide access to it and enhance the users experience of our anthropological heritage. The contemporary significance of this is enormous. The Survey’s attempts to trace the origins of the Irish people continues with the genetic study of populations.

This project will reconnect both and the transnational component will add enormously to the impact of the project on the public construction of Anthropological knowledge.

Ciarán Walsh rewrites the history of anthropology at a conference organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute in the British Museum

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on July 2, 2014 – 4:40 pm

Filed under Anthropology, Heritage, Photography, Research

Jocelyne Dudding, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge and Ciarán Walsh of www.curator.ie in the foyer of the British Museum in London.

It’s a big claim, but papers presented by Jocelyne Dudding and Ciarán Walsh at the Anthropology and Photography conference in the British Museum (May 2014) have challenged the chronology of the early development of British anthropology and Haddon’s role in it.

Dudding and Walsh have been working on the ‘Haddon In Ireland’ project for the past 6 months, focussing on photographic and manuscript collections that are held in Cambridge – in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), the Haddon Library and the University Library.

They presented preliminary finding of their research at a conference organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute and the British Museum. The research, part funded by the Heritage Council of Ireland, is part of a project that is attempting to reconstruct the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey of 1891-1903.

The photographic record of the the Survey, the photograph albums of Charles R. Browne, were published by www.curator.ie in 2012 as part of the the ‘Irish Headhunter’ project. The albums are held in TCD but there was no trace of any paperwork that could place them in context. The search moved to Cambridge and significant work has been done in the photographic collections of the MAA and the Haddon Papers in the Haddon and University Libraries there.

Preliminary findings suggest that the Survey, established by Haddon and Cunningham in TCD in 1891, played a much greater role in Haddon’s transition from Zoology to Anthropology than had previously been thought. The photographic record, correspondence and journal entries reveal a lot about Haddon’s role in the survey with significant implications for the history of the early development of anthropology.

These are being teased as the ‘Haddon in Ireland’ project continues with the re-construction of the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey.

Category Archives: Anthropology

Twenty five photographs that change the history of anthropology

‘Haddon and the Aran Islands’ exhibition in Royal Anthropological Institute | London | Oct 2023

a small book that will change a lot: a very English savage takes a step closer to publication …

“Old” Anatomy goes live for Science Week 2018

Research Update | October 2018

The Skeleton of the Irish Giant, Cornelius Magrath.

Ciarán Walsh elected fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute

Royal Anthropological Institute Research Seminar: Walsh & Dudding

RAI RESEARCH SEMINAR

Haddon in Ireland:

reconstructing the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey

Major research proposal endorsed by NUI Maynooth

Ciarán Walsh rewrites the history of anthropology at a conference organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute in the British Museum

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