School Newsletter 2019 - Staff Spotlight: Elizabeth Hallam

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In October 2019 Elizabeth Hallam joined the School as an Associate Professor in Visual, Material, and Museum Anthropology. She is also a Research Fellow at St Peter’s College, a research affiliate at the Pitt Rivers Museum, and the Editor of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Elizabeth’s research focuses on the anthropology of the body; death and dying; material and visual cultures; human anatomy; three-dimensional models, for example in medical education; making and design; and mixed-media sculpture. Much of her fieldwork, archive and museum-based research is in the UK, along with recent multi-sited research begun in Australia, Singapore and the USA. Her most recent book is Anatomy Museum: Death and the Body Displayed, which won the Wellcome Medal for Anthropology as Applied to Medical Problems.

She is currently editing a book on 3D modelling – of bodies and buildings – in anatomy, anthropology and architecture, and is developing work on experimental ways of researching and teaching in anthropology especially through exhibitions, installations and engagement with art practices. With an interdisciplinary team at the University of Melbourne, Elizabeth is also the partner investigator for the project ‘Disposal of the dead: beyond burial and cremation’, funded by the Australian Research Council, which is concerned with new technologies relating to the deceased. Within this, she is leading a programme of displays and events to be produced in collaboration with artists, curators and designers.