Dr Briony Widdis

Research Fellow, School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics

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Dr Briony Widdis is an anthropologist at Queen’s University Belfast, specialising in the legacies and afterlives of colonialism and the British Empire in Ireland and Northern Ireland, their interaction with social identities, and how they are represented by collections in historic houses, museums and archives.

Briony has thirty years’ experience of working in museums and archives, including as Curator of Africa, Oceania and Americas at National Museums Scotland, Assistant Director at the Northern Ireland Museums Council, Heritage Officer and Culture and Arts Manager at Belfast City Council, and Eighteenth Century Specialist at The National Archives (UK). She is Editor for the Irish Museums Association of Museum Ireland and is on the Programming Committee of the FE McWilliam Gallery within Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council.

Briony has led the introduction in Ireland of participant autoethnography as a method for engaging communities with historically complex collections. Her recent and current publications and projects focus on the development of this method, provenance research surrounding ethnographic collections, histories of enslavement through the Royal African Company and its successors, and decolonisation in cultural institutions on the island of Ireland. She is corresponding editor of the forthcoming Routledge volume, Museums, Empire, Colonialism: Identities, Memory and Legacies in Ireland with Professor Dominic Bryan and Dr Emma Reisz.