Representing Enslavement and Abolition in Museums : Ambiguous Engagements

The year 2007 marked the bicentenary of the Act abolishing British participation in the slave trade. Representing Enslavement and Abolition on Museums- which uniquely draws together contributions from academic commentators, museum professionals, community activists and artists who had an involvement with the bicentenary - reflects on the complexity and difficulty of museums' experiences in presenting and interpreting the histories of slavery and abolition, and places these experiences in the broader context of debates over the bicentenary's significance and the lessons to be learnt from it. The history of Britain’s role in transatlantic slavery officially become part of the National Curriculum in the UK in 2009; with the bicentenary of 2007, this marks the start of increasing public engagement with what has largely been a ‘hidden’ history. The book aims to not only critically review and assess the impact of the bicentenary, but also to identify practical issues that public historians, consultants, museum practitioners, heritage professionals and policy makers can draw upon in developing responses, both to the increasing recognition of Britain’s history of African enslavement and controversial and traumatic histories more generally.

Laurajane Smith is Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Research School of Humanities and the Arts, the Australian National University, Canberra. She is author of Uses of Heritage (2006) and Archaeological Theory and the Politics of Cultural Heritage (2004), co-author of Heritage, Communities and Archaeology (2009) and co-editor of Intangible Heritage (2009). She is editor of the International Journal of Heritage Studies.

Geoff Cubitt is a Senior Lecturer in the History Department and in the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York. He is the author of the books, The Jesuit Myth (1993) and History and Memory (2007), and editor of two others, Imagining Nations (1998) and Heroic Reputations and Exemplary Lives (2000).

Kalliopi Fouseki is a Post-Doctoral Research Assistant on the 1807 Commemorated project in the Department of Archaeology at the University of York.

Ross Wilson is a Post-Doctoral Research Assistant on the 1807 Commemorated project in the Department of History at the University of York.