Tag: Inishbofin

Addendum to Normalising the Abnormal

Addendum to Normalising the Abnormal

In our last blog post, the second of our series on the return of the skulls from Inishbofin, Ciarán Walsh continued the story of the struggles to repatriate the skulls. On 22 February, Trinity College University of Dublin decided to repatriate the thirteen skulls stolen from the island. This may seem like a victory, but …

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Normalising the Abnormal: Trinity College Dublin Decides what to do with its Collection of Stolen Skulls

Normalising the Abnormal: Trinity College Dublin Decides what to do with its Collection of Stolen Skulls

Ciarán Walsh (curator.ie) Charles R. Browne, the first graduate in academic anthropology at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), went to Inishbofin in 1893 with a plan to collect skulls in a burial ground Alfred Cort Haddon had robbed in 1890. The islanders remembered Haddon, and frustrated Browne’s endeavor (Browne 1993: 334). Marie Coyne, founder of Inishbofin Heritage Museum, began …

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The Long Journey Home

The Long Journey Home

Pegi Vail (New York University) In the most recent issue of AJEC (Volume 31 Issue 2), my colleagues and I focused on ‘World Fairs, Exhibitions and Anthropology: Revisiting Contexts of Post-colonialism’ in our introduction (Ferraz de Matos et al. 2022) to this special issue. We look back to the popular live human exhibits and cultural displays at world fairs, expositions, …

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