Reconnecting the Pitt Rivers Museum's Zande collections with their historical and contemporary contexts in South Sudan.

The research project will focus on a major, multi-stranded anthropological fieldwork collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum, formed by E. E. Evans-Pritchard in Zandeland, South Sudan, between 1926 and 1930. Evans-Pritchard's fieldwork provided the basis for, among other publications, his ground-breaking study of Zande witchcraft, oracles and magic. The project will explore the various elements of the collection - objects, photographs, texts and recordings - in relation to one another and to other materials about or from the Zande area, in order to better understand the historical contexts in which they were gathered by Evans-Pritchard, and their contemporary significance for the Zande people and for the new state of South Sudan. In the process it will also advance theoretical and methodological approaches to the study and use of ethnographic museum collections and their historical and contemporary resonances.

The project aims to use this fieldwork collection (1) to examine the historical context of 1920s southwest Sudan, a period and region which has been studied in little detail previously despite being a time of major change under the colonial economy and government; (2) to explore the contemporary meaning and significance of the collections at both the local level where the material was collected - and where people have named familial connections to it - and at the broader level of the creation of cultural and educational resources in a new nation such as South Sudan; and (3) to advance theoretical and methodological approaches to the use of ethnographic collections in historical research and in cultural heritage work. These aims will be accomplished by a series of interlinked objectives: (i) to extend the museum's understanding of its own material by connecting objects to the anthropological and historical literature and to other archival and museum collections; (ii) to identify and work with Zande people on the contemporary meanings of such collections and to exhibit the material and those responses; (iii) to digitize Evans-Pritchard's manuscript collection and make it available on the museum's website, enabling remote engagement; (iv) to work with international agencies and their representatives working in South Sudan (eg UNESCO) on the use of collections in educational and heritage projects.

The project will involve both academic analysis of the Zande collections and practical curatorial and digitisation work on them, as well as a period of fieldwork to engage with Zande communities in South Sudan and the international diaspora, involving interviews, meetings and exhibitions. The research will help the museum understand the potential of its collections for nation building, education and cultural revival. The student will be trained in anthropological, educational, historical and archival research methods, which cut across established research boundaries and which will help drive the next phase of collections research in ethnographic museums.