The Peopling the Past Team at SFU’s Downtown Campus (from left: Chelsea Gardner, Carolyn Laferrière, Victoria Austen, Megan Daniels, Christine Johnston, Sabrina Higgins, Melissa Funke)
Photo Credit: Alan Wheeler
On March 23-25, the Peopling the Past team (Victoria Austen, Melissa Funke, Chelsea Gardner, Sabrina Higgins, Christine Johnston, Carolyn Laferrière, and AMNE’s own Megan Daniels) held a conference entitled “Presenting the Past: Responsible Scholarship and Ancient Mediterranean History”. Speakers included museum and heritage professionals, artists, podcasters, and educators in various sectors, who presented on their own work and participated in broader discussions regarding our responsibilities in presenting the ancient past to modern audiences.
Topics included decolonizing museum collections and narratives, collection and display practices in ancient African collections, approaches to the body and disability in museums, Indigeneity in classics pedagogy, creating more diverse and equitable approaches to pedagogy, teaching the ancient Mediterranean outside of the academy, and the digitization of ancient Mediterranean history. It was an inspiring two-and-a-half day event, which kicked off with a wonderful keynote by Egyptologist Dr. Kara Cooney (UCLA) on comparisons between ancient Egyptian kingship and our modern experiences of power.
Thank you to all who attended and to all who helped make this happen! Special thanks goes to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Simon Fraser University Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies, the SFU Global Humanities Department, the Vancouver Chapter of the American Research Centre in Egypt, Acadia University, the University of Winnipeg, Green College (UBC), and our own AMNE Department for their generous support!
