POSTPONED: New York’s African Burial Ground and the Struggle for Human Rights: An Archaeology of Public Engagement

In light of recent COVID-19 developments, we will be postponing the 2020 Hall Annual Lecture, which was due to take place on Friday 27 March 2020 at The University of Queensland. 

We hope to be able to reschedule the event for later in the year and will keep you informed of a new date when available. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and thank you for your understanding.

About the lecture

African American political thought and scientific practice have long incorporated political activism and publicly-engaged scholarship. This approach, which requires research to be guided by the needs of oppressed and marginalised communities, offers scientific tools for the expression of group rights, elevating their voices in debates about the past in plural democracies. The clientage model of public engagement used by the African Burial Ground Project in New York City (1992-2009) is a case in point. At this designated cemetery for enslaved Africans, archaeologists and anthropologists pursued research questions proposed by the African American descendant community through a process of public engagement. As well as producing an unusually diverse research team, innovated ethical bioarchaeology (the study of human physical remains) and uniquely sophisticated methods and reports, it also resulted in the establishment of a United States National Monument that demonstrated the high degree of public interest in archaeology. This project exemplifies the public and scientific benefits of acknowledging the intrinsic subjectivity of science as opposed to denying those subjectivities, as commonly expressed in the objectively unverifiable Enlightenment belief in scientific neutrality.

About the presenter

Michael L. Blakey is National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Anthropology, Africana Studies, and American Studies, and Founding Director of the Institute for Historical Biology at the College of William & Mary, Virginia. Graduating with a B.A. from Howard University and M.A. and PhD in anthropology from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, he has had a distinguished career, including professorships at Spelman College, Columbia, Brown, La Sapienza, and Howard University, where he founded the W. Montague Cobb Biological Anthropology Laboratory. Prof. Blakey was a Key Advisor of the award-winning Race: Are We So Different exhibition of the American Anthropological Association, where he held several offices including president of the Association of Black Anthropologists (1987-1989) and member of the editorial board of American Anthropologist (2012-2016). He represented the United States on the Council of the 4^th World Archaeological Congress (1999) and is a member of the Scholarly Advisory Committee of the National Museum of African American History and Culture of the Smithsonian Institution. He was Scientific Director of the New York African Burial Ground Project (1992-2009), the most extensive bioarchaeological project in the United States, and a director of the Remembering Slavery, Resistance, and Freedom Project sponsored by the Virginia General Assembly from 2010-2015.  His publications in English and French, cover bioarchaeology, publicly engaged archaeology, and scientific racism. His numerous awards include the honorary Doctor of Science, York College, CUNY.

Enquiries

socialscience@uq.edu.au

The Hall Annual Lecture is given in honour of the founder of archaeology at The University of Queensland, Associate Professor Jay Hall.

This event is supported by the Everick Foundation. 

Image Header: Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith