Robin Boast

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Robin Boast
Robin Boast.jpg
Born (1956-03-02) 2 March 1956 (age 66)

Robin Benville Boast (born 2 March 1956) is the Professor Emeritus at the University of Amsterdam, Department of Media Studies. [1] [2] Until the end of 2012 Prof. Boast was an Associate Professor [3] and Curator for World Archaeology at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge. In December 2021, Prof. Boast retired from the University of Amsterdam where he taught for nine years on Cultural Information Science, Neo-colonial information governance, and the history and sociology of digitally and collecting.

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He has been a Visiting Professor at the European University Institute in Florence, a Principal Investigator/Scientific Advisor for several EU projects, [4] [5] [6] and was the Director of the Virtual Teaching Collection Project. Boast has worked in museums in the US and Britain for over 30 years, specializing in museum access, classification and documentation, especially around diverse knowledge communities. Through a program of historical, theoretical and practical inquiry, his research explores forms of informed, collaborative and critical access to museum spaces and collections. Boast is currently working with many indigenous communities around the world that seek to enable and re-centre the many dimensions of local knowledge expertise within the academy – research informed by the critiques of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, Post-colonial studies, Indigenous Studies and collaborative developments in e-Science.

He has worked for several years on an international research project which subjects the museum and the academy to the ethnographic gaze of indigenous partners to de-centre the ownership and control of research of indigenous patrimony. Prof. Boast has worked with source community museums and heritage organizations with Ramesh Srinivasan and James Enote, primarily at the A:shiwi A:wan Museum & Heritage Center in Zuni, New Mexico (USA). [7] [8] Most recently, Boast has been involved with repatriation and archiving projects with the Office of Indigenous Strategy and Engagement, Flinders University. His recent book projects include The Machine in the Ghost: Digitality and its Consequences, as well as an ongoing book project on Digital Information.

Prof. Boast is the Chair of the EU's Europeana Research Advisory Board

Publications

Joint publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museum of Anthropology at UBC</span> Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, Canada

The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada is renowned for its displays of world arts and cultures, in particular works by First Nations of the Pacific Northwest. As well as being a major tourist destination, MOA is a research and teaching museum, where UBC courses in art, anthropology, archaeology, conservation, and museum studies are given. MOA houses close to 50,000 ethnographic objects, as well as 535,000 archaeological objects in its building alone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canadian Museum of History</span> Canadas national museum on anthropology, ethnology, and history

The Canadian Museum of History is a national museum on anthropology, Canadian history, cultural studies, and ethnology in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. The purpose of the museum is to promote the heritage of Canada, as well as support related research. The museum is based in a 75,000-square-metre-building (810,000 sq ft) designed by Douglas Cardinal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virtual museum</span> Museum in a digital format

A virtual museum is a digital entity that draws on the characteristics of a museum, in order to complement, enhance, or augment the museum experience through personalization, interactivity, and richness of content. Virtual museums can perform as the digital footprint of a physical museum, or can act independently, while maintaining the authoritative status as bestowed by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in its definition of a museum. In tandem with the ICOM mission of a physical museum, the virtual museum is also committed to public access; to both the knowledge systems imbedded in the collections and the systematic, and coherent organization of their display, as well as to their long-term preservation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cultural heritage</span> Physical artifact or intangible attribute of a society inherited from past generations

Cultural heritage is the heritage of tangible and intangible heritage assets of a group or society that is inherited from past generations. Not all heritages of past generations are "heritage"; rather, heritage is a product of selection by society.

Community archaeology is archaeology by the people for the people. The field is also known as public archaeology. There is debate about whether the terms are interchangeable; some believe that community archaeology is but one form of public archaeology, which can include many other modes of practice, in addition to what is described here. The design, goals, involved communities, and methods in community archaeology projects vary greatly, but there are two general aspects found in all community archaeology projects. First, community archaeology involves communities "in the planning and carrying out of research projects that are of direct interest to them". Second, community archaeologists generally believe they are making an altruistic difference. Many scholars on the subject have argued that community collaboration does not have a pre-set method to follow. Although not found in every project, there are a number of recurring purposes and goals in community archaeology. Similarities are also found in different countries and regions—due to commonalities in archaeological communities, laws, institutions, and types of communities. It has also been suggested that public archaeology can be defined in a broad sense as the production and consumption of archaeological "commodities".

Virtual heritage or cultural heritage and technology is the body of works dealing with information and communication technologies and their application to cultural heritage, such as virtual archaeology. It aims to restore ancient cultures as real (virtual) environments where users can immerse.

The Lowell D. Holmes Museum of Anthropology began in 1966 as the Museum of Man, at the bequest and initiation of Dr. Lowell Holmes, Professor of Anthropology at Wichita State University in Wichita, Kansas, United States. Over the next 33 years it grew slowly and became known throughout the campus as a small but interesting museum. The collections and exhibitions include cultural items from around the world and archaeological objects predominantly from the American Midwest and Southwest. In 1999, the anthropology department and the museum moved to a new location in Neff Hall. The museum was expanded and Mr. Jerry Martin was hired as Director. This was the first time that the museum had a professional director whose only job was to work with, and develop the museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge</span> University Museum in Cambridge

The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, also known as MAA, at the University of Cambridge houses the university's collections of local antiquities, together with archaeological and ethnographic artefacts from around the world. The museum is located on the university's Downing Site, on the corner of Downing Street and Tennis Court Road. In 2013 it reopened following a major refurbishment of the exhibition galleries, with a new public entrance directly on to Downing Street.

The Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage (IPinCH) Project is a seven-year international research initiative based at Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia, Canada. IPinCH's work explores the rights, values, and responsibilities of material culture, cultural knowledge, and the practice of heritage research. The project is directed by Dr. George P. Nicholas, co-developed with Julie Hollowell and Kelly Bannister and is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada's (SSHRC) major collaborative research initiatives (MCRI) program.

George R. Milner, Ph.D., is an archaeologist in the Department of Anthropology at The Pennsylvania State University. He has done extensive archaeological research on sites encompassing a wide range of time periods in Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Kentucky, and has also worked in Egypt and Saipan (Micronesia). He has worked with prehistoric and historic human skeletal remains from eastern North America, Denmark, and Egypt. By using modern samples of known age from the United States, Switzerland, and Portugal, he has helped refine skeletal age estimation techniques.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virtual Teaching Collection</span>

The Virtual Teaching Collection (VTC) project at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge within the University of Cambridge, led by Dr Robin Boast, ran from 1994 to 1997 and was part of the Teaching and Learning Technology Project funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ramesh Srinivasan</span> American academic

Ramesh Srinivasan is a professor of Information Studies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baking Pot</span>

Baking Pot is a Maya archaeological site located in the Belize River Valley on the southern bank of the river, northeast of modern-day town of San Ignacio in the Cayo District of Belize; it is 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) downstream from the Barton Ramie and Lower Dover archaeological sites. Baking Pot is associated with an extensive amount of research into Maya settlements, community-based archaeology, and of agricultural production; the site possesses lithic workshops, and possible evidence of cash-cropping cacao as well as a long occupation from the Preclassic through to the Postclassic period.

For organizational design, the Virtual Centre of Excellence is a term which has come into use from various sources, including funders such as the European Union.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timothy Insoll</span> British archaeologist and academic (born 1967)

Timothy Insoll is a British archaeologist and Africanist and Islamic Studies scholar. Since 2016 he has been Al-Qasimi Professor of African and Islamic Archaeology at the University of Exeter. He is also founder and director of the Centre for Islamic Archaeology. Previously he was at the Department of Archaeology at the University of Manchester (1999–2016).

Digital repatriation is the return of items of cultural heritage in a digital format to the communities from which they originated. The term originated from within anthropology, and typically referred to the creation of digital photographs of ethnographic material, which would then be made available to members of the originating culture. However, the term has also been applied to museum, library, and archives collections, and can refer not only to digital photographs of items, but also digital collections and virtual exhibits including 3D scans and audio recordings. Intangible cultural heritage, which includes traditional skills and knowledge, can also be digitally repatriated to communities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wendy Sandler</span> American-Israeli linguist

Wendy Sandler is an American-Israeli linguist who is known for her research on the phonology of Sign Languages.

Anne (Annie) Clarke is an Australian archaeologist and heritage specialist. She is a Professor of archaeology and heritage at the University of Sydney. Clarke is a leading scholar in Australian archaeology, both historical and Aboriginal, as well as critical heritage studies. She has specialisms in archaeobotany, contact archaeology and rock art.

Margarita Gleba is an archaeologist and expert on early textiles and other organic materials.

The European Network of Science Centres and Museums (ECSITE), is a not-for-profit organisation initiated in 1989.

References

Information drawn in part from Dr. Boast's blog [9] and his web page at UvA. [10] Prof. Boast's pages on [11]

  1. https://www.uva.nl/en/profile/b/o/r.boast/r.boast.html University of Amsterdam staff page for Robin Boast
  2. https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2020/communication-media-studies The Department of Mediastudies at UvA is currently ranked #1 in the world by QS
  3. https://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/2019-20/weekly/6582/section5.shtml Cambridge Reporter, Joint Report of the Council and the General Board on the titles and structure of academic offices, 18 March 2020
  4. http://cheurope-project.eu CHEurope Marie Curie Project Webpage
  5. https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/250481 ECLAP (European Cultural Library of Artistic Performance, Cordis EU Website
  6. https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/693857 TRACES EU Project, Cordis EU Website
  7. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249623628_Diverse_Knowledges_and_Contact_Zones_within_the_Digital_Museum Ramesh Srinivasan, Katherine M. Becvar, Robin Boast & Jim Enote (2010) Diverse_Knowledges_and_Contact_Zones_within_the_Digital_Museum, Science, Technology & Human Values 35(5):735-768
  8. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01972240903028714 Ramesh Srinivasan, Robin Boast, Jonathan Furner & Katherine M. Becvar (2009) Digital Museums and Diverse Cultural Knowledges: Moving Past the Traditional Catalog. The Information Society, 25(4)
  9. "Rescite". Rescite.blogspot.co.uk. 2011-01-21. Retrieved 2015-08-14.
  10. "Prof. Dr. R. (Robin) Boast". 4 January 2022.
  11. Research Gate