Anna Bohlin, Researcher, Uni of Gothenburg
Associate Professor in Social Anthropology at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. My previous research has focused on the ways that communities, organisations and governments draw on and use the past in various settings, from large-scale national programmes such as land restitution in South Africa and river restoration in Sweden, to local heritage initiatives. In South Africa I investigated processes of remembering and forgetting relating to forced removals, restitution and reconciliation in urban contexts, and have also published on public participation in heritage management in Sweden and South Africa, with a focus on contested sites with ’recent’ histories. Currently, I am involved in the Centre for Critical Heritage Studies (University of Gothenburg/University College London) and the Research Cluster Making Global Heritage Futures, where I am interested in the intersection between things/materials, temporality and sustainability. My current research focuses on our relations to everyday things in the home, and on reuse and secondhand practices as alternative and embodied forms of heritage. This is explored in Re:heritage – Circulation and Marketization of Things With History (Swedish Research Council), and Living (with) Things (Seedbox), a collaboration with the Museum of World Culture, Gothenburg.