Internship Projects
Photo: CO-OP interns (left to right) Ing Morokoth, Pim Fitzpayne, and Phuy Meychean examining Southeast Asian materials in the reserves of the British Museum. (Reproduced with permission).
The CO-OP programme supported two internship projects in the 2023-24 academic year. Four interns carried out research focused on two UK collections, under the mentorship of the core academic team. Their research supports the broader research programme by defining barriers to provenance research and by examining ideas of “restitution”.
Digital Repatriation of Javanese Manuscripts
This project investigates the material realities, possibilities, and resonances of digitisation. A short podcast series, Sacred Pixels: Navigating the British Library’s Digitisation of the Yogyakarta Kraton Manuscripts, brings together research in the manuscript collections at the British Library and interviews with scholars. In four episodes, it explores early methods of digitising and collecting, material embodiments in manuscript cultures, contemporary Indonesian discourse on repatriation of manuscripts, and production of knowledge in the colonial archive.
In exploring the epistemic violence of colonial knowledge production, the project asks:
- If the archive itself is a technology of colonialism, can the creation of new archives resist reinscribing its violence?
- What kind of community/social relationships exist around a manuscript and how do they change after the manuscript enters a virtual plane?
Intern
Khmer Collections at the British Museum
This project examines the entanglement of the art market and museums in the context of the Khmer collection at the British Museum. Through provenance research, the project draws the contours of the collection, investigating object types held as well as the actors—both individuals and institutions—which affected the collection development. In seeking to uncover the sometimes complex acquisition histories of select objects only minimally documented in the museum we aim also to probe the place of the museum in assigning market value and facilitating ongoing trade.
With a focus on the Khmer objects at the British Museum, the project questions:
- To what extent does the transfer of art objects from private collectors to public museums hinder or help understandings of these objects?
- Why does provenance matter and what information is lost, concealed or produced in the processes of transfer?
