Bence contributes new insights on Pacific material collected by local actors during the height of the British Empire, the emergence of public museums, and the formation of British anthropology as a discipline.
Using archival research and object analysis, combined with an examination of curatorial networks and practice, the Bristol Museum’s Pacific material is situated within global, institutional and intellectual contexts.
She undertakes a narrative exploration of Bristol’s collectors, donors, and museum staff, and investigates how regional actors forged and engaged with early anthropological theory and colonial processes.
This thesis challenges the binary of metropole and province and the assumption that British science developed in large metropolitan centres.
Bristol is repositioned as a regiopolis, central to the emergence and promotion of British anthropology as a discipline.
The Museum is conceptualised as a civic laboratory where Western epistemologies were established and reinforced.
