Keynote Speaker

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

PROF. DR. JOHN HUTNYK

Adjunct Professor of RMIT University, Australia and independent researcher.

Keynote Speech Title:

"Colonial Museums: Memory, Market and Education"

Abstract

Wanting to make a case for the continued importance of critique, this talk introduces key concepts from the Arts and Social Sciences that might be of use for those working on urban regeneration projects, heritage and preservation, gentrification or museum commemoration. Two study locations are considered, in Kolkata, West Bengal and London, England - the conjoined sites of East India Company trade and their ongoing contemporary links - to rethink notions of globalisation, memory, market and education. What and whose interests drive urban renewal, reconstruction, and regeneration? How does community consultation and involvement impact urban transformation? How does the state, commercial and corporate sector act to ensure the renewal of capital in the city? How is the public(s) informed? And what is excluded or omitted here, how might the blind spots of redevelopment be seen? Examples will be collected - a giraffe, a rhinoceros, cloth, opium, tea - and perhaps displayed in a (im)possible multisite museum.

PROF. DR. JOHN HUTNYK'S BRIEF BIO/CV:

Professor Hutnyk, originally studied and taught in Australia at Deakin and Melbourne Universities and wrote his PhD on the history of the city of Calcutta in India. In the mid 1990s he moved to England to pursue research on diaspora and immigration and has published 9 books on topics such as music and politics, borders, Marxism, transgression and terror. He joined Manchester University’s Institute for Creative and Cultural Research in 1994 before moving to Goldsmiths in 1998, becoming Academic Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies in 2004 and staying until 2014. He has held visiting researcher posts in Germany at the South Asia Institute and Institute fur Ethnologie at Heidelberg University, and Visiting Professor posts in InterCultural Studies at Nagoya City University Japan, Zeppelin University and Hamburg University, Germany and most recently Mimar Sinan University Istanbul and National Chao Tung University, Taiwan.

a written interview with Professor Hutnyk is here, a spoken interview is here.