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CRESA L. PUGH

PhD Candidate, Sociology and Social Policy
482 William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
clpugh@g.harvard.edu

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I am a PhD Candidate in Sociology and Social Policy with a secondary field in History of Science at Harvard University. My research examines the social legacies of imperialism in postcolonial Africa and Southeast Asia, cultural heritage and museums, and violence. Using archival and ethnographic data collected across three continents, my dissertation, entitled ‘Guardians of Beautiful Things’?: The Politics of Postcolonial Cultural Heritage Theft, Refusal and Repair, examines the politics of cultural theft, specifically thinking through how debates about artifacts looted from the Benin Kingdom (Nigeria) by British forces now housed in Western museums help us understand and grapple with the vestiges of cultural imperialism. The project interrogates questions of ownership, appropriation and violence through the medium of 16th century brass and ivory artifacts whose displacement continues to serve as an archival record of a dispossessed cultural body. My research fundamentally examines narratives of restitution and repair and the ways in which healing and the reclamation of memory and communal historiographies materialize in the postcolonial context. My work sits at the intersection of transnational historical and cultural sociology; postcolonial theory; materiality; race, ethnicity and indigeneity; and museum, art history and heritage studies.

I have previously worked on issues related to cultural equity within the healthcare industry, grantmaking and philanthropy within the immigrant rights sector, and education and development in Southeast Asia. A native of Nashville, TN, I hold a BA in Anthropology and Religion from Bates College, an MSc in Migration Studies from the University of Oxford, and an MA in Sociology from Harvard University.

 

 

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