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Masterclass at the 2023 Atlantic Anthropological workshop on 23 April .

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on April 21, 2023 – 4:13 pm

Filed under Anthropology | Curatorial Projects, Conference

I will present a masterclass at the 2023 Atlantic Anthropological / Antraipeolaíochta Atlantach workshop at the Sacred Heart Dingle Campus in Daingean Uí Chúis, Co. Kerry. Convened by Dr. James Cuffe (University College Cork) and Dr. Fiona Murphy (Dublin City University), the workshop offers a multi-modal exploration of anthropology in its broadest sense, an objective that resonates profoundly with historical and contemporary themes in my research, which Berghahn Books will publish in September 2023.

To explain: In 1895 Haddon called for the study. of anthropology in its widest sense, challenging restrictions placed on the investigation under the name of anthropology of a variety of social, philosophical and political topics, a doctrine enforced by anatomists who advocated a politically conservative construction of evolutionist biology. In 2020, I completed my doctoral research on Haddon’s involvement in the skull measuring business in Ireland, when a similar debate was happening in anthropology and sociology. That focussed my attention on what, practically speaking, becoming an anthropologist means nowadays, especially as I come from a visual arts background, and becoming an anthropologist was somehow accidental. As contradictory as it sounds, that is the theme of my masterclass.

The Stolen Skulls of Inishbofin. Photo, by Marie Coyne (2022) of Inishbofin Island off the coast of Galway in Ireland. The ruin of St Colman's Monastery provides a backdrop for the contemporary burial ground in the foreground. Haddon and Dixon stole thirteen crania (skulls without jaw bones) from the monastery in 1890, and gave the collection to Trinity College Dublin. Marie Coyne and Ciarán Walsh began campaigning for their return in 2012.

An Island Funeral, Inishbofin, 16 July 2023.

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on March 29, 2023 – 10:25 am

Filed under Curatorial Projects, Repatriation Projects, Stolen Skulls

St Colmans’s Monastery and burial ground, Inishbofin. Photo Marie Coyne.

Inishbofin community representatives and repatriation campaigners met with Eoin O’Sullivan and Ciarán O’Neill of TCD last night (28 March 2023), and agreed in outline arrangements for the return and burial of ancestral remains held in the Haddon Dixon Collection; in accordance with island traditions and community archaeology guidelines.

The remains will be handed over to the community at a ceremony in TCD and taken by an undertaker to Galway before being transferred by boat to the island, where they will be buried on Sunday 16 July 2023, one hundred and thirty three years to the day after they were taken.

It seems that this will serve as a model for the return and burial of the remains taken from St Finian’s Bay and Oileán Árann.

It’s been a long and, at times, difficult process, but the motto of the cooperative movement in Ireland is ní neart go cur le chéile (with unity comes strength) and we thank all of our supporters. This would not have happened without them.

We also thank Andrew O’Connell of the Provost’s Office in TCD. His intervention was a turning point in our negotiations with TCD. We especially thank Eoin O’Sullivan and Ciarán O’Neill, who got the deal across the line. Also, thanks to Mobeen Hussain and Patrick Walsh of the colonial legacies project TCD.

Marie Coyne and Ciarán Walsh

on behalf of the

The Haddon Dixon Repatriation Project

Marie Coyne, Inishbofin Heritage Museum.

Dr Pegi Vail, NYU, anthropologist, filmmaker, and community representative Inishbofin.

Cathy Galvin, poet and journalist.

Deirdre Casey, Comhlacht Forbartha an Gleanna (St Finian’s / the Glen).

Niamh Cotter, anthropologist, geographer, and community representative, Inis Mór, Árann.

René Gapert, independent forensic anthropologist.

Dr Fiona Murphy, Anthropologist.

Máirtín Ó Conceanainn, community representative, Inis Mór, Árann.

Pádraig Ó Direáin, community representative, Inis Mór, Árann.

Pat O’Leary, Comhlacht Forbartha an Gleanna (St Finian’s / the Glen).

Ciarán Walsh, curator and anthropologist.

Inishbofin Community and Friends

Inishbofin Development Company

Tuuli Rantala, Community development Co-Ordinator

Tommy Burke

Ryan Lash

Pauline King

Aoife King

Every person who attended the public meeting on Inishbofin on 4 November 2022, those who signed the petition on Inishbofin and online, and made submissions to TCD on our behalf.

Eamon Ó Cuiv TD

Deaglán O’Mocháin, Dearcán Media.

Ana Ivasiuc, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures.

All the journalists who covered the story in the media.

Teampall Cholmain 2023 – 1890

A composite photograph by Ciarán Walsh of St Colman's Monastery, showing Marie Coyne's 2014 colour recreation (left) of the photograph of A. C. Haddon's black and white original (right), recording the location of the skulls (bottom right corner) he and Dixon stole under cover of darkness on 16 July 1890. The photographs show the eastern gable of the mediaeval monastery, and in Haddon also recorded the scene in an identical sketch in his journal, and that sketch illustrates a vivid account of the theft.

A composite photograph of St Colman’s Monastery, showing Marie Coyne’s 2014 recreation (left) of the photograph of A. C. Haddon’s original (right), recording the location of the skulls (bottom right corner) he and Dixon stole under cover of darkness on 16 July 1890. Haddon also recorded the scene in an identical sketch in his journal, and that sketch illustrates a vivid account of the theft.

TCD to announce return of ancestral remains to Inishbofin

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on February 22, 2023 – 11:40 am

Filed under Curatorial Projects, Stolen Skulls

Marie Coyne, 2022, St Colman’s Monastery and burial ground.

It is expected that the board of TCD will decide today (22 February 2023) to return to Inishbofin the ancestral remains Haddon and Dixon stole in 1890.

We were unable to achieve the return of the Árann and St Finian Bay remains as part of this deal, but there is now a procedure in place in TCD to submit claims in respect of these remains:

It should also be stressed that this document focuses specifically on the Inishbofin case though it has potential relevance for future requests from other communities of origin in Ireland seeking the return and reburial of other human remains in the Haddon/Dixon collection including those collected from Finian’s Bay, Co. Kerry and the Aran Islands as well as other human remains’ collections at TCD.

https://www.tcd.ie/news_events/articles/trinity-college-dublin-launches-legacies-review-working-group-/

It’s been a long campaign (link to AJEC blog) that is now drawing to a close, and, on behalf of everyone involved, I thank you for all your support and work.

Ciarán Walsh, curator.ie

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

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on January 13, 2023 – 12:56 pm

Filed under Comment, Public Engagement, Research

I suspended work on my Ballymaclinton blog while writing my book on Haddon for Berghahn Books New York, but the announcement that the Trustees of the Hunterian Museum in London have withdrawn the skeleton of Charles O’Brien – an Irish giant known and Charles Byrne – from public display brought the resumption of blogging forward by a couple of weeks.

The ethics of such displays were an important part of my research and the subject of a previous blog on Cornelius Magrath, another Irish giant. It seemed like a good time to resume blogging and An Irish giant, 24 stolen skulls, one colonial legacies project and a slave owner named Berkeley is the first of a new series of blogs that feature aspects of my recent research and current activism.

Preview:

Brendan Holland in the Anatomy Museum TCD during the filming of The Giant Gene for BBC. Photo Chris Nikkel. Chris Nikkel and Brendan Holland filmed part of their documentary The Giant Gene in the museum and a key question for Holland, as a contemporary Irish giant, was whether he would like his bones to go on public display like Magrath in Dublin and O’Brien in London.

What does the removal of the skeleton of Charles Byrne from public display in London mean for Trinity College Dublin with regard to its retention of 24 skulls stolen from community burial grounds in Inishbofin, the Aran Islands and St. Finian’s Bay, Kerry? The repatriation of these remains has become a test case for the colonial legacies project initiated by Prof Ciarán O’Neill in 2020 and the question now is whether the issue of human remains in collections in London and Dublin tells us anything about the impending judgement on Berkeley’s involvement in slavery. …

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Inishbofin Islanders demand repatriation of remains held in TCD

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on November 19, 2022 – 9:01 am

Filed under Advocacy and Activism, Public Engagement

As of Friday last (November 18, 2022) 150 members of the Inishbofin community had signed a petition demanding the repatriation of the remains of thirteen islanders stolen from the burial ground on the island in 1890 and placed in a collection of anthropological specimens in the Anatomy Museum in TCD, where they remain in their original display cases.

Marie Coyne, Director of Inishbofin Heritage launched a repatriation campaign ten years ago after reading about the theft in an exhibition of ethnographic photographs held by TCD. In 2020, Coyne co-signed a letter to Paddy Prendergast, Provost of TCD, seeking the repatriation of the remains after he announced plans to ‘decolonise’ the college campus. Prendergast agreed that the remains should be returned but the college did a U-turn after a committee tasked with the redevelopment of the Anatomy Museum objected.

Behind the scenes negotiations continued, but little progress was made and in August 2022 a spokesperson for the “Old’ Anatomy Working Group confirmed that TCD School of Medicine was is ‘not in a position to support a request for deaccession of the crania and transfer to the possession of private individuals or historical interest groups’.

Two weeks later, community representatives and repatriation campaigners attended a meeting Provost Linda Doyle organised with members of the colonial legacies team and a decision on repatriation seemed imminent. It never happened and sources in TCD confirmed that Council of the university agreed with the School of Medicine.

TCD sent a delegation to the island in November for a public meeting with the community. The delegates outlined how the college intended to process the claim as part of the Trinity Colonial Legacies project and asked for the community to engage with the process. The community responded with a unanimous show of hands demanding the repatriation of the remains held by TCD and this was repeated as an emphatic mandate when the delegation refused to engage with proposals from the floor.

26 people attended that meeting although many more islanders could not be present because of a funeral and the timing of the meeting. It was decided to confirm the show of hands with a petition of the full community and the petition will be sent to TCD early next week. In the meantime, the Trinity Colonial Legacies project is finalising a process of public consultation and evidence gathering that it hopes will persuade the Board of the college to support the repatriation process in the face of continued opposition from the School of Medicine, even though they accept that they are asking the community to jump through hoops.

The Ann Doherty Collection goes on show

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on September 29, 2022 – 7:32 am

Filed under Archive Projects, Curatorial Projects, Photography

The Ann Doherty Collection is an archive of photographic material, typescripts, and print journalism generated by Ann Doherty while working as a social-documentary photographer and photojournalist between 1997 and 2005. Donegal County Council Archives Service acquired her collection in 2018 and, with the assistance of the Heritage Council, employed Ciarán | curator.ie to catalogue the entire collection and digitise 100 images for exhibition in the County Museum. “A Common Humanity: Full Circle” opened in Letterkenny on September 22, 2022 in preparation for Culture Night.

“Head-hunting” in TCD: negotiations begin on the repatriation of the Haddon Dixon Collection.

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on September 6, 2022 – 9:31 am

Filed under Curatorial Projects, Public Engagement

Group photograph showing PatO'Leary, St Finian's Bay, Cathy Galvin, journalist and poet, Pegi Vail, anthropologist at NYU, Ciarán Walsh, curator.ie, the main square in Trinity College Dublin ahead of a meeting with Provost Linda Doyle to negotiate the return and burial of the Haddon Dixon Collection, a collection of skulls stolen from community burial grounds in the west of Ireland in 1890 and held in the "Old" Anatomy Museum in the University.

The Haddon Dixon Repatriation delegation gathers in TCD ahead of a meeting with Provost Linda Doyle and her colonial legacies team. L-R: Pat O’Leary, St Finian’s Bay community representative, Cathy Galvin, journalist and poet, Pegi Vail anthropologist and film maker at New York University, and Ciarán Walsh, curator.ie.

A delegation from the Haddon Dixon Repatriation Project (above) met with Provost Linda Doyle’s colonial legacy team to begin negotiations on the return and burial of the Haddon Dixon Collection, a collection of 24 skulls stolen from community burial grounds in the west of Ireland in 1890 and currently held in the “Old” Anatomy Museum in the University.

Pat O’Leary opened the meeting by presenting the community perspective on the repatriation claim. Cathy Galvin read a statement on behalf on Marie Coyne, Inishbofin Heritage Museum, who initiated the claim in 2012. A large contingent of community representatives attended via zoom. Eoin O’Sullivan, Senior Dean in the School of Social Work and Social Policy, and Ciarán O’Neill, Ussher Associate Professor in Nineteenth-Century History, responded and the discussion that followed marked the commencement of a public engagement process that will inform a decision on the repatriation claim, which is expected in December 2022.

Photograph showing a sign that reads "Inishbofin, Haddon & Dixon." Visible in the background are a series of skull wrapped in plastic and stored on shelves in a glass-fronted cabinet, one of the display cases in the "Old " Anatomy Museum in Trinity College Dublin.

Ann Doherty | A Common Humanity

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on August 24, 2022 – 1:56 pm

Filed under Archival/Curation Projects, Photography

The first phase of the Ann Doherty Project is complete.

Working with County Archivist Niamh Brennan, Ciarán Walsh and Ann Doherty selected and digitised 75 images from the Ann Doherty Collection. The focus now moves to the County Museum where Caroline Carr and Judith McCarthy are putting the exhibition together. The exhibition is titled A Common Humanity and is scheduled to open on September 22, 2022.

Meanwhile, work begins on cataloguing the collection and putting it in online alongside other collections in the archives.

curator.ie begins work on the Ann Doherty collection in Donegal County Archives Service

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on July 6, 2022 – 1:08 pm

Filed under Curatorial Projects

Ciarán Walsh begins work on the Ann Doherty Collection in Donegal County Archives Service. Photo: Niamh Brennan, Archivist at Donegal County Council.

Donegal County Council Archives Service acquired a collection of photographs by Ann Doherty in 2018. Doherty worked as a photojournalist with the Sunday Times Magazine between 1998 and 2005 and documented ordinary people living in extraordinary situations across the world. She documented poverty in Blair’s Britain and travelled through post-communist Caucasus countries, Ukraine, and the Balkans. She also worked in Jordan, Egypt, and Sierra Leone. Doherty grew up in England, but her grandmother lived on Gola Island, a small island off the coast of Donegal. This was the subject of her first commission and it remained a major influence on her work as a social documentary photographer.

The Heritage Council awarded Donegal County Archives Service a Heritage Stewardship grant to employ an archivist / curator to work with County Archivist Niamh Brennan and catalogue, digitise, and prepare the collection for exhibition in partnership with Caroline Carr and Judith McCarthy in the County Museum. Ciarán Walsh began work on the project in July, working alongside Niamh Brennan and Ann Doherty on the selection and digitising of 75 images for exhibition. The second phase of the project got underway in August and an exhibition of Doherty’s photographs titled A Common Humanity is scheduled to open in Donegal County Museum in Letterkenny on September 22.

Rewriting the history of Irish anthropology part 1: BEROSE International Encyclopaedia.

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on July 6, 2022 – 12:16 pm

Filed under Comment, Criticism, Research

Anon. 1885. Dredging party, 1885, with friends.
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),
Permission of the Royal Irish Academy © RIA

BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology has commissioned Ciarán Walsh to write a new entry on the life and work of Alfred Cort Haddon (1865 – 1940). The entry draws on independent post-doc research for a ground-breaking reassessment of Haddon’s contribution to the modernisation of anthropology that Berghahn Books commissioned as part of its series on Anthropology’s Ancestors. Alfred Cort Haddon: a very English savage (in Ireland) is due out in 2023 and represents a radical reworking of Haddon’s work as an artist, philosopher, ethnologist and anti-racism activist whose experiments in photo-ethnography cinematography constitute a singularly modernist achievement in anthropology.

The timing couldn’t be better. The photograph above records a seminal moment in the brave new world of practical marine biology which sets the scene for Haddon’s enthusiastic entry into ethnology two years later, an event that was so disruptive it triggered a decade-long battle with anatomists who attempted to restrict academic anthropology to the study of the natural history of the human species in situations defined by theoretical positions compatible with empire and evolution. This scenario has its analogue in the current stand-off between those who see anthropology as an engaged and essentially emancipatory project and those who operate a restricted form of practical anthropology within a neoliberal academy.

As such, the BEROSE entry represents the first part of a new history of anthropology in Ireland. It addresses key themes of the current debate about what it means to do anthropology (to borrow a phrase from Clifford Geertz) in the intertwined contexts of an engagement with colonial legacies sparked by the Black Lives Matter Movement, legislated genocide in the Amazon and other flash-points across the globe, and the restrictions on knowledge production that characterise a neoliberal academy.

BEROSE will publish “Artist, Philosopher, Ethnologist and Activist: The Life and Work of Alfred Cort Haddon (1855-1940)” by Ciarán Walsh in August 2022.

Tag Archives: www.curator.ie

Masterclass at the 2023 Atlantic Anthropological workshop on 23 April .

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.

Inishbofin Islanders demand repatriation of remains held in TCD

The Ann Doherty Collection goes on show

“Head-hunting” in TCD: negotiations begin on the repatriation of the Haddon Dixon Collection.

Ann Doherty | A Common Humanity

curator.ie begins work on the Ann Doherty collection in Donegal County Archives Service

Rewriting the history of Irish anthropology part 1: BEROSE International Encyclopaedia.

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