ANU Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies Research Fellow Dr Jilda Andrews will be giving the annual Macleay Collections Lecture for the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney.

Dr Jilda Andrews works within a framework of ontology, the study of being. As she writes, colliding ontologically in anthropological fieldwork is as routine as eating toast for breakfast; we train for it, we expect it, we write about and learn from it. These collisions enable our work, are captured in what we produce, and for those of us that work in museums, historical collisions are distilled in collection and exhibition. But of the ontological collisions themselves - the sites where worldviews interface and exchange - there is still a lot to learn. In this lecture Dr Andrews looks at how ontological collisions can reveal a different kind of ‘culture work’ for museum practitioners today – and how collections of cultural material and knowledges can become sites for ongoing collision.

Dr Jilda Andrews is a Yuwaalaraay woman, cultural practitioner and researcher based in Canberra. Jilda draws from her heritage to investigate the connectedness of land, story and culture to objects in museum collections. Her focus on material culture and their associated stories continue to push the definition of custodianship, from one which is focused on the preservation of objects, to one which strives to maintain connections between objects and the systems which produce them.

For more information regarding this event, please visit the Chau Chak Wing Museum website. The event will be hosted online. Please register for a copy of the event link.