Prof. Dr. Paul Basu
Hertz Chair for Global Heritage
University of Bonn
Research professorship of the Transdisciplinary Research Area "Present Pasts" of the University of Bonn.
Critical heritage and museum studies in transcultural contexts
Temporalities, spatialities, positionalities
Paul Basu is an anthropologist specialising in critical heritage, museum and material culture studies in transcultural contexts. He draws upon a wide range of ethnographic, historical and participatory methods to explore how pasts are differently materialized and mediated in the present, and how they shape futures. Basu's research examines the complex ways in which natural as well as cultural heritage is entangled in shifting regimes of value and geopolitical configurations. His work has often involved re-engagements with colonial archives and collections relating to West Africa, exploring their ambiguous status as both sites of epistemic violence and, potentially, resources for communities to recover cultural histories, memories and alternative ways of knowing and being in the world. Basu is director of the Global Heritage Lab, which brings together an international team of researchers to experiment with decolonial approaches to activating the pluriversal possibilities of historical collections and archives, not least to address the social, environmental and planetary crises of our time.
Prof. Dr. Paul Basu
Bischofsplatz 1
53113 Bonn
Curriculum Vitae
Paul Basu studied social anthropology at University College London, where he received his PhD in 2002. He subsequently held a lectureship then senior lectureship in anthropology at the University of Sussex, before taking up a readership at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, where he coordinated its renowned museum studies programme. He became Professor of Anthropology and Cultural Heritage at University College London in 2014, and Professor of Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 2015. He joined the University of Bonn as Hertz Chair for Global Heritage in 2022.
Before becoming an anthropologist, Basu trained and worked in film and television production, and he continues to use audio-visual as well as other multimodal and participatory approaches in his research. He has designed and curated numerous exhibitions and museum spaces.
Third-Party Funded Projects
Entanglements: West African heritage and community curation in the UK
Duration:
2019-2021
Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. Paul Basu
Funder:
National Lottery Heritage Fund (UK)
Museum affordances: Activating West African ethnographic archives and collections through experimental museology
Duration:
2018-2021
Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. Paul Basu
Funder:
Website:
Arts & Humanities Research Council (UK)
Reassembling N. W. Thomas’s anthropological mission to Sierra Leone, 1914-15
Duration:
2014-2015
Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. Paul Basu
Funder:
Leverhulme Trust (UK)
Archives, histories, landscapes: Surveying Sierra Leone’s cultural memoryscape
Duration:
2013-2014
Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. Paul Basu
Funder:
British Academy (UK)
i-Treasures: ICT for Intangible Cultural Heritage
Duration:
2013-2016
Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. Paul Basu
Funder:
European Union
Utopian archives: Excavating colonial pasts for postcolonial futures
Duration:
2012-2013
Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. Paul Basu
Funder:
Arts & Humanities Research Council (UK)
Reanimating cultural heritage: Digital repatriation, knowledge networks and civil society strengthening in post-conflict Sierra Leone
Duration:
2009-2012
Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. Paul Basu
Funder:
Website:
Arts & Humanities Research Council (UK)
Object diasporas, resourcing communities: Surveying Sierra Leone’s material culture in the global museumscape
Duration:
2007-2008
Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. Paul Basu
Funder:
British Academy (UK)
Publications
Towards the pluriversal museum
Basu, P.
Culture et musées, forthcoming (2023).
Re-mobilising colonial collections in decolonial times
Basu, P.
In: Mobile museums: Collections in circulation
Driver, F., Nesbitt, M. & Cornish, C. (eds.)
UCL Press (2021).
The Inbetweenness of Things
Basu, P. (ed.)
Bloomsbury (2017).
N. W. Thomas and colonial anthropology in British West Africa
Basu, P.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 22, 84-107 (2016).
Utopian archives, decolonial affordances
Basu, P. & de Jong, F. (eds.)
Social Anthropology, 24 (2016).
Reanimating cultural heritage: Digital curatorship, knowledge networks and social transformation in Sierra Leone
Basu, P.
In: Museum Transformations
Coombes, A. & Phillips, R.B. (eds.)
Wiley-Blackwell (2015).
Colonial histories of heritage: Legislative migrations and the politics of preservation
Basu, P. & Damodaran, V.
Past and Present, 223, 239-270 (2015).
Museums, heritage and international development
Basu, P. & Modest, W. (eds.)
Routledge (2015).
Recasting the national narrative: Postcolonial pastiche and the new Sierra Leone Peace and Cultural Monument
Basu, P.
African Arts, 46, 10-25 (2013).
Object diasporas, resourcing communities: Sierra Leonean collections in the global heritagescape
Basu, P.
Museum Anthropology, 34, 28-42 (2011).
Administrative and Academic Staff
Helen Siegburg
Office Manager / Global Heritage Lab
Emilia Schmidt, M.A.
Research Manager / Global Heritage Lab
Dr. Alejandro Mora Motta
Global Heritage Lab
Further Information
TRA Present Pasts
Research on the preconditions and conditions of the emergence of modern societies as well as on negotiation processes of heritage.
Research profile
The University of Bonn has stood for top-level research for over 200 years.