Talk Title: UK Heritage Institutions’ Repatriation Practices

The talk was delivered on 12 February 2025 by Rachel Gatehouse, as part of the DIS research seminars series.

This paper addresses gaps in understanding of UK heritage institutions’ repatriation practices by compiling and analysing a comprehensive database of repatriated items from 2010 to 2022. While recent literature focuses on practical repatriation guidance, there is limited information on the broader trends and patterns in repatriation conducted by UK heritage institutions. This study provides a new overview by quantitatively examining repatriated items over a twelve-year period, which reveals key insights into the general landscape of cultural repatriation in the UK. Our analysis shows that approximately 400 items, mainly human remains, have been returned predominantly to Indigenous communities in Australia. The findings highlight a trend of increasing repatriations with a slight diversification, mainly focused on items from British colonial contexts. Our research also identifies significant gaps in UK repatriation practices and debates concerning certain regions, including South America and Europe and many countries with colonial histories to the UK which are not preset in the database. It contributes to the broader discussions on cultural heritage and restitution by advocating for a re-evaluation of ownership, belonging, and responsibility in the global context of cultural heritage. Its implications extend beyond academia, which aims to influence policy, practice, and ethical considerations in the repatriation of cultural heritage worldwide.

Talk Title: ECycles of knowledge: ‘discoveries’ in historical library collections

The talk was delivered on 5 February 2025 by Carlotta Barranu, teaching on the module ‘Manuscript Studies’ at UCL, as part of the DIS research seminars series.

This paper reflects on a recent ‘discovery’ in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle: an early 16th-century philosophy manual assembled for the students attending the Faculty of Arts at the University of Leuven. The existence of this textbook is mentioned in documents pertaining to the University, but was presumed ‘lost’ due to the lack of known copies. The volume in the Royal Library is therefore not simply unique but also potentially meaningful in contributing to our understanding of the impact of print on the early university. The paper will assess this potential by analysing the volume and by providing an initial scope of its significance for the history of higher learning. It will then reflect on this “lost&found” process: how the cycle of gathering, storing, forgetting, and rediscovering knowledge informs the creation of categories of importance, which in turn affects object survival.

Charlie Barranu is Curator of Books and Manuscripts at the Royal Library, Windsor Castle. She previously held research positions at the University of Cambridge after getting her PhD in medieval literature. She has been teaching on the module ‘Manuscript Studies’ at UCL since 2019.