Professor Paul Basu

paul basu

Professor of Anthropology

Curator, Pitt Rivers Museum
 

Linacre College

Contact

  paul.basu@anthro.ox.ac.uk    

Research Interests

Paul Basu is an anthropologist specialising in critical heritage, museum and material culture studies in transcultural contexts. He draws upon a wide range of ethnographic, historical and participatory methods to explore how pasts are differently materialized and mediated in the present, and how they shape futures. Paul's research examines the complex ways in which natural as well as cultural heritage is entangled in shifting regimes of value and geopolitical configurations. His work has often involved re-engagements with colonial archives and collections relating to West Africa, exploring their ambiguous status as both sites of epistemic violence and, potentially, resources for communities to recover cultural histories, memories and alternative ways of knowing and being in the world.

Before becoming an anthropologist, Paul trained and worked in film and television production, and he continues to use audio-visual as well as other multimodal and participatory approaches in his research. He has curated numerous exhibitions, has often engaged in museum and heritage consultancy work, and serves on various advisory boards.

Paul was recently Principle Investigator of the AHRC-funded Museum Affordances / [Re:]Entanglements project. He teaches on the Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology Masters programmes.

Selected Project Media

Selected writing

[Re:]Entanglements blog series - https://re-entanglements.net/blog/

 

Agbo, G. E., P. Basu and G. Chika-Kanu (forthcoming), ‘Archival Return, Ancestral Presence and the “Igbo Deep Present” in Southern Nigeria’, in M. Jones, P. Lane and B. Silverstein (eds), Returns and Reconnections: Engaging Indigenous and Community Relationships with the Deep Past, London: Bloomsbury.

Basu, P. (2025), ‘Voicing Silences in the Colonial Photographic Archive’, Visual Anthropology Review 41 (1).

Basu, P., H. Geismar and R. Vokes (2025), ‘(Re)Sounding Images. Part One: (Re)Sounding Archival Images’, Visual Anthropology Review 41 (1).

Basu, P. (2025). ‘Transpositional Geologies: Presencing the Politics of Mineral Specimens’, in S. Mikloweit (ed.), Transpositional Geologies: Spectres of Coloniality, pp.43-50, Berlin: Kerber.

Basu, P. (2025), ‘Exhibiting Colonial Entanglements: String Figures and Material Metaphors’, in M. Schulze and S. Walternspül (eds), String Figures: A Cultural Practice between Art, Anthropology and Theory, pp.69-91, Berlin: Diaphenes.

Basu, P. and G. E. Agbo (2024), ‘Uli: The Colonial Archive as Decolonial Cultural Resource’, African Arts 57 (3): 8-25.

Basu, P. (2024), ‘Towards the Pluriversal Museum: From Epistemic Violence to Ecologies of Knowledge’, Museums & Social Issues 18 (1-2): 78-93.

Basu, P. (2023), ‘Pour un musée pluriversel: Da la violence épistémique aux écologies de savoirs’, Culture & Musées 41: 63-91.

Basu, P. (2022), ‘Art as Colonial Contact Zone: Troubled Encounters in Kirchner and Nolde: Expressionism, Colonialism’, Stedelijk Studies.

Basu, P. (2021), ‘Re-Mobilising Colonial Collections in Decolonial Times’, in F. Driver, M. Nesbitt and C. Cornish (eds), Mobile Museums: Collections in Circulation, pp.44-70, London: UCL Press.

Basu, P. (2021), ‘Northcote Whitridge Thomas (1868-1936)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Basu, P. (ed.) (2017), The Inbetweeness of Things: Materializing Mediation and Movement between Worlds, London: Bloomsbury.

Basu, P. (2017) ‘The Inbetweenness of Things’, in P. Basu (ed.), The Inbetweeness of Things: Materializing Mediation and Movement between Worlds, pp.1-20, London: Bloomsbury.

Basu, P. (2016), ‘N. W. Thomas and Colonial Anthropology in British West Africa: Reappraising a Cautionary Tale’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 22 (1): 84-107.

Basu, P. & F. de Jong (eds) (2016), Utopian Archives, Decolonial Affordances, special issue of Social Anthropology 24 (1).

Basu, P. & F. de Jong (2016), ‘Utopian Archives, Decolonial Affordances’, Social Anthropology 24 (1): 5-19.

Basu, P. (2016), ‘Communicating Anthropology: Writing, Screening and Exhibiting Culture’, in S. Coleman, S. B. Hyatt & A. Kingsolver (eds), The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Anthropology, pp.124-43, New York: Routledge.

Basu, P. (2015), ‘Reanimating Cultural Heritage: Digital Curatorship, Knowledge Networks and Social Transformation in Sierra Leone’, in A. Coombes & R. Phillips (eds), International Handbooks of Museum Studies, Volume IV: Museum Transformations, pp.337-64, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Basu, P. & V. Damodaran (2015), ‘Colonial Histories of Heritage: Legislative Migrations and the Politics of Preservation’, Past and Present 223 (Sup. 10): 239-70.

Basu, P. & W. Modest (eds) (2015), Museums, Heritage and International Development, New York & London: Routledge.

Basu, P. & W. Modest (2015), ‘Museums, Heritage and Development: A Critical Conversation’, in P. Basu & W. Modest (eds), Museums, Heritage and International Development, pp.1-32, New York & London: Routledge.

Basu, P. & J. Zetterstrom-Sharp (2015), ‘Complicating Culture for Development: Negotiating “Dysfunctional Heritage” in Sierra Leone’, in P. Basu & W. Modest (eds), Museums, Heritage and International Development, pp.56-82, New York & London: Routledge.

Basu, P. (2013), ‘Recasting the National Narrative: Postcolonial Pastiche and the New Sierra Leone Peace and Cultural Monument’, African Arts 46 (3): 10-25.

Basu, P. (2013), ‘Memoryscapes and Multi-Sited Methods: Researching Cultural Memory in Sierra Leone’, In E. Keightley & M. Pickering (eds), Research Methods for Memory Studies, pp.115-31, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Basu, P. (2013), ‘Material Culture: Ancestries and Trajectories in Material Culture Studies’, in J. Carrier & D. B. Gewertz (eds), Handbook of Sociocultural Anthropology, pp.370-90, London: Bloomsbury.

Basu, P. (2012), ‘A Museum for Sierra Leone? Amateur Enthusiasms and Colonial Museum Policy in British West Africa’, in S. Longair & J. McAleer (eds), Curating Empire: Museums and the British Imperial Experience, pp.145-67, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Basu, P. (2012), ‘Cairns in the Landscape: Migrant Stones and Migrant Stories in Scotland and its Diaspora’ in A. Arnason et al (eds), Landscapes Beyond Land: Routes, Aesthetics, Narratives, pp.116-38, Oxford: Berghahn.

Basu, P. (2011), ‘Object Diasporas, Resourcing Communities: Sierra Leonean Collections in the Global Museumscape’, Museum Anthropology 34 (1): 28-42.

Basu. P. & S. Coleman (eds) (2010), Pathways to Anthropology, special issue of Anthropology in Action 17 (2-3).

Basu, P. & S. Coleman (eds) (2008), ‘Migrant Worlds, Material Cultures’, Mobilities 3 (3): 313-330.

Basu, P. & S. Coleman (2008), Migrant Worlds, Material Cultures, special issue of Mobilities 3 (3).

Basu, P. (2008), ‘Confronting the Past? Negotiating a Heritage of Conflict in Sierra Leone’, Journal of Material Culture 13 (2): 233-47.

Basu, P. (2008), ‘Reframing Ethnographic Film’, in T. Austin & W. de Jong (eds), Rethinking Documentary: New Perspectives and Practices, pp.94-106, Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Basu, P. (2007), ‘Palimpsest Memoryscapes: Materializing and Mediating War and Peace in Sierra Leone’, in F. de Jong & M. Rowlands (eds), Reclaiming Heritage: Alternative Imaginaries of Memory in West Africa, pp.231-59, Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.

Basu, P. (2007), Highland Homecomings: Genealogy and Heritage-Tourism in the Scottish Diaspora, London: Routledge.

Macdonald, S. & P. Basu (eds) (2007), Exhibition Experiments, Oxford: Blackwell.

Basu, P. & S. Macdonald (2007), ‘Experiments in Exhibition, Ethnography, Art and Science’, in S. Macdonald & P. Basu (eds), Exhibition Experiments, pp.1-24, Oxford: Blackwell.

Basu, P. (2007), ‘The Labyrinthine Aesthetic in Contemporary Museum Design’ in S. Macdonald & P. Basu (eds) Exhibition Experiments, pp.47-70, Oxford: Blackwell.

Basu, P. (2006), ‘Pilgrims to the Far Country: North American “Roots-Tourists” in the Scottish Highlands and Islands’ in C. Ray (ed.) Transatlantic Scots, pp.286-317, Tuscaloosa: Alabama University Press.

Basu, P. (2005), ‘Roots-Tourism as Return Movement: Semantics and the Scottish Diaspora’ in M. Harper (ed.) Emigrant Homecomings: The Return Movement of Emigrants, 1600-2000, pp.131-50, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Basu, P. (2005), ‘Macpherson Country: Genealogical Identities, Spatial Histories and the Scottish Diasporic Clanscape’, Cultural Geographies 12 (2): 123-150.

Basu, P. (2005), ‘Museum, Landscape and the Storytelling Space Between’, Landscape & Arts 34/35: 2-6.

Basu, P. (2004), ‘“My Own Island Home”: Orkney Homecoming’, Journal of Material Culture 9 (1): 27-42.

Basu, P. (2004), ‘Route Metaphors of Roots-Tourism in the Scottish Diaspora’ in S. Coleman & J. Eade (eds) Reframing Pilgrimage: Cultures in Motion, pp.150-74, London: Routledge.

Basu, P. (2001), ‘Hunting Down Home: Reflections on Homeland and the Search for Identity in the Scottish Diaspora’ in B. Bender & M. Winer (eds) Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile and Place, pp.333-48, Oxford: Berg.

Current DPhil students