Matters of Belonging

Prof. dr. Wayne Modest is the Head of the Research Center for Material Culture, the research institute of the Tropenmuseum, Museum Volkenkunde, Africa Museum and Wereldmuseum in the Netherlands. He is also Professor of Material Culture and Critical Heritage Studies in the Faculty of Humanities at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Prof. dr. Nicholas Thomas did doctoral research in the Marquesas Islands and has since written extensively on exploration and cross-cultural encounters and on art histories in the Pacific. He has been Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge since 2006.

Doris Prlic is coordinator of the European cooperation project SWICH - Sharing a World of Inclusion, Creativity and Heritage at Weltmuseum Wien (since January 2015). She previously worked as independent curator, realizing projects for different cultural organisations such as Festival der Regionen or afo - architekturforum oberösterreich (Linz, Austria).

Dr. Claudia Augustat is curator of the South America collections at Weltmuseum Wien, Vienna, with a regional focus on Amazonia. In her research, she concentrates on topics such as material culture and cultural memory, collaborative projects as well as decolonization of museum practice. She is project leader of SWICH - Sharing a World of Inclusion, Creativity and Heritage (since January 2018).