Imperial Museum Dynasties in Europe

Alison Kahn was trained as Anthropologist at the universities of London (M.A.) and Oxford (M.Phil., D.Phil.). She works in the digital archive management sector and in academia, lecturing on documentary filmmaking and museum anthropology. She integrates the use of audio-visual artifacts and digital media as tools and products of her research. Her area of study includes the Vatican’s ethnographic collections and colonial and post-colonial discourses in India, focusing on Naga material culture in European museums and Anglo-Indian global diasporas. Alison is Director of the Oxford Documentary Film Institute, Visiting Fellow in Digital Learning Systems at Loughborough University, and Senior Tutorial Fellow in Museum Anthropology at Stanford University’s Overseas Program in Oxford. Her research portfolio spans across museum curatorship, digital learning, and collaborative ethnographic film-making. Her current research investigates how children engage with multimedia activities, including: film, AI, and online learning platforms.

• The Ethnographic Exhibit as a Showcase of Liberal Humanism in Nineteenth-Century Europe.- The Making of the Vatican’s ‘Modern’ Museum Dynasty: The Ethnology of Fr. Wilhelm Schmidt SVD.- Old and New Dynastic Orders: German Anthropology in the era of Bismarck.- Dynastic Networks: The Collision of Christianity and Colonialism in New Guinea.- Fr. Franz Kirschbaum's Contribution to Collecting in New Guinea.- Material Culture Crossing Empires: Notes, Queries and Letters.- The Pontifical Missionary Exhibition (1925): The Last Great Nineteenth-Century Exhibition.- Empires End and Ominous Beginnings-: The Missionary and Ethnological Museum (1927) and the Lateran Treaty (1929).