Amy Shakespeare (she/her)

Amy is a museum and heritage professional and AHRC-funded PhD Student based in Cornwall, England. She has worked in the museums and heritage sector in the UK for over a decade. She decided to pursue a PhD due to the museum sector’s lack of action in regards to repatriation and anticolonial practice, and she hopes her work will enable more European museums to undertake repatriation.

Her PhD research is funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and focuses on belongings that have returned from UK museums to Native Nations in what is now known as the US and First Nations in what is now known as Canada. Her thesis explores how museums can create more anticolonial repatriation processes, the legacy of repatriation for museum practice, and how museums interpret repatriation for the public.

Amy completed her BA (Hons) in History at the University of Exeter, Penryn Campus in 2014, then had a short break from academia before completing my MA in Heritage and Interpretation at the University of Leicester whilst working full-time in January 2020. During my MA I was awarded the School of Museum Studies' Professor Susan Pearce Prize for the highest marked dissertation relating to museum and gallery objects for my dissertation What If We Want To Give It Back? The Potential of Democratising the Repatriation Process in Britain.