This NSF Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Minority Research and Training Post-Doctoral Fellowship addresses the question of how Afro-British natural history museum audiences relate to British museums as institutions, and how they receive the representations of heritage posed by such museums. The proposed research extends from the researcher's dissertation research that found that human origins exhibitions often alienate and exclude Black audiences. This sense of alienation was particularly felt amongst Afro-British audiences to traditional British natural history museums. The post-doctoral project seeks to closely examine Black British perceptions of the natural history museum as an institution, as well as its anthropological representations of African evolutionary and cultural heritage. It aims to probe perceptions of visitors to the Natural History Museum (London), the Horniman Museum (London) as well as among a non-museum visiting pool of respondents derived from British cultural organizations. To probe perceptions, the project uses innovative methodological approaches, including quantitative questionnaire data, qualitative interview data, inter-generational focus groups and children's groups. The comparative approach will offer insight into how museum studies can better gain access to the complex ways meanings are made in museums. The research will be conducted over the course of twenty-four months while at the University of Southampton's archaeology of art and representation program, and under the mentorship of foremost anthropology of museums scholar, Stephanie Moser. The Southampton program is the premier academic center for critiquing the role of anthropology in popular culture, and is also pioneering novel methods of involving varied communities in museum archaeology. Once an understanding of the relationship between Black audiences and museums has been ascertained, the project will offer strategies British natural history museums can use to better reach out to and incorporate their diverse audiences. Such strategies will be applicable to museums worldwide, and will be made available through published findings, as well as through the researcher' ongoing involvement in museum outreach initiatives
