All alumni and friends are warmly invited to the 2024 Girton College Lawrence Room event at 2pm in the Stanley Library on Saturday 28 September.
To book a place at this talk please email alumni@girton.cam.ac.uk or call 01223 764935.
Pā kahawai: A world inside a hook
Pacific fish-hooks are not an uncommon sight in European museums, but the way they are displayed and interpreted often fails to capture the imagination and curiosity of audiences. Bringing together the five pā kahawai (Māori trolling hooks) housed in Girton College with examples from the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge and beyond, this talk aims to reveal why hooks are more than small utilitarian objects, and how their abilities to bridge land and sea, articulate past and present, and connect peoples, make them amongst the most extraordinary objects of Pacific material culture.
Dr Lucie Carreau is a museum practitioner and researcher based at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) at the University of Cambridge. Trained at the Ecole du Louvre in Paris and the Sainsbury Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, her research engages with the history of Pacific collections in the UK, their care and interpretation, often focusing on displaced, marginal and overlooked objects.