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New history of Anglo-Irish anthropology marks the centenary of the Haddon Library in Cambridge

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on September 25, 2020 – 9:48 am
Filed under Curatorial Projects, History of Anthropology

old tropes & new histories: an “Irish” reading of the Haddon Papers

is the theme of a 15 minute presentation by Dr Ciarán Walsh marking the centenary of the establishment of the Haddon Library. The event is part of Cambridge University’s Alumni Festival 2020 and is especially significant given that Walsh’s groundbreaking study of Haddon’s role in anglo-Irish anthropology started at the Alumni Festival in 2013.

The Irish section of the Haddon Library in 2013

Aidan Baker, the Haddon Librarian, invited Walsh to curate an exhibition of photographs from the Irish Ethnographic Survey as part of Alumni Festival 2013. The photo above captures the low level of interest in Ireland at the time, but, in preparation for the opening, Aidan searched the “locked room” for Haddon’s personal copy of the seminal “Ethnography of the Aran Islands, County Galway”, which the Royal Irish Academy published in 1893. For some reason Haddon didn’t keep a copy, but Aidan found his file on the Aran Islands, which had been ‘missing’ for a century or so.  

Aidan Baker, Haddon Librarian, with Haddon’s file on the Aran Islands, which was separated from the main body of his papers in 1913 and found in the Haddon Library in 2013.

That file contained ten pages from a journal that Haddon kept during his first visit to the islands in 1890, a manuscript of a commentary for the ethnographic slideshow that he performed on his return to Dublin, a sketchbook, photographic plates from “Ethnography of the Aran Islands, County Galway,” a map and other documents.

This triggered a sustained reading of the Irish component of the Haddon Papers in Cambridge University Library, guided initially by Dr John Pickles. That began in 2014 and culminated in a radical review of Haddon’s contribution to the development of Anglo-Irish anthropology in the 1890s: a major piece of doctoral research (funded by the Irish Research Council) that has just been completed.,

A small part of that research will be presented in this exploration of new facets of the life and career of Alfred Cord Haddon:

https://www.alumni.cam.ac.uk/festival/events/the-haddon-library-at-100-–-new-facets-of-alfred-haddon

one editor, two curators & one new history of anthropology

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on June 20, 2020 – 12:06 pm
Filed under Advocacy and Activism, Anthropology | Curatorial Projects, Journalism

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/the-victorian-curator-who-railed-against-racism-and-imperialism-39297723.html

Today, the Irish Independent publishes a segment of my research on the skull-measuring-business in Ireland in the 1890s. Commissioned by Jon Smith, Editor of the Review at the Irish Independent, this article looks back at a column that Alfred Cort Haddon wrote for the newspaper in 1893 and 1894, when it traded as The Daily Irish Independent.

Haddon worked as a curator in the Natural History Museum in Dublin and, at first glance, he seemed to be writing a general guide to the collections in the Museum for the readers of the newspaper. However, a closer reading reveals a wonderfully subversive allegory that anticipates the Black Lives Matter movement and Tribal Voice, the 2020 anti-genocide online campaign co-ordinated by Survival International.

It is fitting that the current version of The Daily Irish Independent should publish this piece and, in the process, completely subvert the history of anthropology in Ireland.

So, to participate in a small moment of history, go out and buy the Irish Independent today.

Becoming an Anthropologist

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on January 21, 2020 – 1:37 pm
Filed under Anthropology | Curatorial Projects

Last Friday, I became an anthropologist after I successfully defended my PhD thesis at Maynooth University (MU), where I made a short presentation about my research on the skull measuring business in Ireland and answered questions from a panel of experts who were appointed to assess the quality of my research and the arguments presented in my thesis.

Dr David Shankland, Director of the Royal Anthropological Institute in London, agreed to act as external examiner when I submitted my thesis in October 2019. He described it as an excellent piece of research, which, if grades were given for a PhD, would have achieved the grade of summa cum laude, with the highest distinction.

Prof Hana Červinková, Head of the Dept of Anthropology at MU, agreed to act as an internal examiner. She led an interesting discussion of the relationship between my work as a visual arts curator and an anthropologist, which revealed the extent to which a brief exposure to anthropology in art college in the 1980s had a profound influence on my work as a curator ever since. It was at that point in the discussion that I realised that I had become an anthropologist.

Dr. Thomas Flavin agreed to chair the examination and Dr Mark Maguire and Prof David Prendergast, my supervisors, attended as observers, as is the practice on these occasions. Prof Martina Hennessy represented TCD School of Medicine, which is a research partner in this project.

L-R: Chair Dr. Thomas Flavin (Associate Professor, Economics, Finance and Accounting, MU), Supervisor Prof David Prendergast (Dept of Anthropology MU), external examiner Dr David Shankland (Director, Royal Anthropological Institute, London), internal examiner Prof Hana Červinková (Head of Dept of Anthropology, MU), Ciarán Walsh, IRC Scholar, and supervisor Dr Mark Maguire (Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, MU).

The panel decided that I should be awarded a Doctorate degree without further examination, subject to making the changes specified to the satisfaction of my internal examiner, a process that should take a couple of weeks. Then I submit hardbound copies of my thesis and I become a Doctor of Philosophy (Anthropology) at a conferring ceremony in Maynooth University in September 2020.

Acknowledgements

My thesis represents the culmination of groundbreaking and critically acclaimed work on John Millington’s Synge’s ethnographic photography, which was developed in the “Irish Headhunter” project with co-curator Dáithí De Mórdha. This led into this study of the skull measuring business and the associated development by Alfred Cort Haddon of an early form of modern visual ethnography in the west of Ireland in the 1890s. This project was truly collaborative and would not have been possible without the support of many people in Dublin, Cambridge, London, and, of course, Ballyheigue.

There isn’t enough space to acknowledge individual contributions here, but I do want to acknowledge the support – financial and otherwise – of the Irish Research Council and Shanahan Research Group over a period of almost 5 years. With regard to the academic programme, I acknowledge the generosity of everyone in Cambridge University Library, Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Haddon Library, Trinity College Dublin, and the support, hard work, patience, and perseverance of everyone in the Anthropology Department at Maynooth University.

Thank You | Míle Buíochas

Ciarán Walsh participates in Royal Anthropological Institute conference in the British Museum

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on March 24, 2014 – 12:23 pm
Filed under Anthropology, Heritage, Photography, Research

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Ciaran Walsh, www.curator.ie, and Jocelyne Dudding of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge University have put together a panel of speakers that ensures a strong Irish dimension to a major conference on the role of photography in anthropology. The panel will include Dáithí de Mórdha of Íonad an Bhlascaoid Mhóir and Mark Maguire, Head of Anthropology in NUIM (National University of Ireland, Maynooth). It will focus on the photography of Alfred Cort Haddon and examine the importance of the Irish Ethnographic Survey of 1891-1903 in terms of a contemporary understanding of the history of anthropology and photography.

The Royal Anthropological Institute has organised the conference in conjunction with the British Museum’s Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. The aim of the Conference is to stimulate an international discussion on the place, role and future of photography.

‘Headhunter’ exhibition opens in The National Museum Of Ireland, Country Life.

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on January 7, 2013 – 12:02 pm
Filed under Exhibition, Heritage

The photograph shows the 'Headhunter' exhibition being installed in The National Museum of Ireland. It features a half plate field camera (c 1895) and a skull sitting on top of a display case while members of the museum's staff hang the photographs of Charles R Browne in the background. The exhibition was developed by Ciarán Walsh of EYEBALL publishing,web www.curator.ie, an independent curator based in Balltheigue, Co Kerry, Ireland. It was developed with Dáithí de Mórddha of Ionad an Bhlascaoid Mhóir,Blasket Centre, Dún Chaoin, with funding from the OPEW and the Heritage Council.

 

 

The photograph shows the ‘Headhunter’ exhibition being installed in The National Museum of Ireland | Country Life in Turlough Park, Castlebar. It features a half plate field camera (c 1895 provided by Chris Rodmell) and a skull sitting on top of a display case while members of the museum’s staff hang the photographs of Charles R Browne in the background. The exhibition was developed by Ciarán Walsh of www.curator.ie and Dáithí de Mórdha of Ionad an Bhlascaoid Mhóir,Blasket Centre, Dún Chaoin, with funding from the OPW and the Heritage Council. Séamas Mac Philib of  The National Museum of Ireland | Country Life is the curator. The exhibition runs until May 2013.

 

For more information contact  Country Life at  

+353 94 903 1755

or 

tpark@museum.ie

or visit the website at

http://www.museum.ie/en/exhibition/the-irish-headhunter.aspx

 

Headhunters: Special Showing in OPW Headquarters, Trim.

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on December 4, 2012 – 4:00 pm
Filed under Exhibition, Heritage

Publicity shot of the 'Headhunter' exhibition in the headquarters of the OPW (Office of Public Works)  in Trim, Co. Meath, in the east of Ireland. The exhibition entitled 'The Irish Headhunter, The photograph Albums of Charles R. Browne' was developed by Ciarán Walsh who runs www.curator.ie, a web orientated media and punlishing company based in Ballyheigue.

 

‘HEADHUNTERS’  IN TRIM

The ‘Headhunter’ exhibition has been touring the west of Ireland since May, starting in the Blasket Centre and moving through Aran, Connemara and on to Meath where it has just opened in  the spectacular building that is the headquarters of the OPW  – by architect Pat Boyle of the OPW and worth a look in itself.  The Headhunter project was developed with support from the OPW.

It is on show there until the 14 December and   this is the last chance to see the exhibition in the Pale. It moves back west in December  when it goes on show in the National Museum of Ireland, Country Life in Castlebar.

 

 

‘Headhunter’ exhibition moves to the National Museum Of Ireland – Country Life in Mayo.

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on November 19, 2012 – 12:06 pm
Filed under Exhibition, Heritage

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An Island Funeral, Inishbofin, 16 July 2023.



TCD to announce return of ancestral remains to Inishbofin



Blogging resumes on Ballymaclinton: An Irish giant, 24 stolen skulls, one colonial legacies project and a slave owner named Berkeley.



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