Hannah Niblett

Profile

I am a PhD researcher at the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds, researching the ecologies and materialities of stored museum collections.

My academic background covers art practice and theory, critical theory and museum studies, and I have a professional background in heritage collection management, having worked across archives, special collections, museums and historic sites. My work with unaccredited, site-based and community collections led to a deep interest in why we, as humans, collect and care for material from the past and how we relate to it beyond and despite the mediating structures of formal heritage institutions.

My work interrogates questions of materiality, affectivity and agency in historic collections. It foregrounds, sometimes provocatively, the material and environmental entanglement of the human and nonhuman, and considers how such ecological thinking can challenge and reframe the nature of heritage in the Anthropocene.

My project is funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) via the White Rose College for Arts and Humanities (WRoCAH).

Research interests

• Heritage ecologies
• New materialism
• Affect theory
• Anthropocene studies
• Museum and archaeological materialities
• Coastal materialities
• Autopoetics and speculative writing

Qualifications

• MA Art Gallery and Museum Studies, University of Manchester
• MA Critical Theory, Manchester Metropolitan University
• BA Fine Art and Art History, University of Plymouth