Nicole Crescenzi’s PhD thesis awarded by Fondazione Professoressa Carla Barbati
On November 5th, 2025, the Fondazione Professoressa Carla Barbati awarded Nicole Crescenzi for her PhD thesis “Exhibiting Human remains: an issue at the intersection of ethics, museology and law” defended at IMT Lucca on June 11th, 2025. In her thesis Nicole explores the exhibition of human remains as a contested and controversial subject. She discusses…
Ethical Entanglement Roundtable: “Academic Feudalism” Research Ethics and Sustainability in Biomolecular Archaeology at ISBA11 International Symposium on Biomolecular Archaeology
On 29 August, Rita Peyroteo Stjerna (Uppsala University) and Mari Tõrv (University of Tartu) chaired the roundtable “Academic Feudalism”: Research Ethics and Sustainability in Biomolecular Archaeology at ISBA11 in Turin. The session focused on ethical and sustainable approaches to cultural heritage research through the lens of biomolecular archaeology. “Instead of a regular session, we proposed a roundtable…
“…in the Museum together with the others.” Subjecthood and objectification in a “Cathedral to Science” in Turin.
Turin, like many other Italian University cities, has a long, illustrious, and sometimes problematic legacy of anatomy. Here, some of the largest anatomical collections were formed in the 18th and 19th century, and Italy is also the place of origin for the development of wax models used to teach anatomy and medicine. A Cathedral to Science Named…
Millie-Christine McKoy, Christina Larsdotter, trauma and resilience. Micro History and Community Engagement in North Carolina.
Earlier this fall, I was invited to celebrate Millie-Christine Day in Whiteville NC. It was a quite spectacular occasion. For the first time hiphop artist, musician, poet, and activist Napoleon Maddox brought the full production of Twice the First Time, a performance that celebrates the life of conjoined twins Millie-Christine McKoy and gives form to…
Attenzione! Taking on the Future – report from a roundtable discussion
At the annual meeting for the Association for European Archaeologists at Sapienza University in Rome, August 28-31, 2024, Ethical Entanglements organised a roundtable discussion called “What are the Next Challenges for the Professional Ethics of Human Remains.” It might be relevant to note that when we submitted the proposal for the conference we were asked…
The Window into Ötzi
On our way to the EAA meetings in Rome, the Ethical Entanglements team stopped over in Bolzano to see the exhibit of one of the most famous individuals in European prehistory, “Ötzi the Ice Man,” at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, and to meet with the director Elisabeth Vallazza to discuss choices, strategies, and experiences in caring for…
All the skeletons in the school closets
Last week it was that time again. Swedish media and the public were made aware of the presence of human remains in schools across Sweden. This time the event that triggered the news coverage was the discovery, on behalf of a parent, that a skeleton suspended from the roof of a theatre stage in their…
A Nordic Perspective on Collections of Human Remains
Viewed from the outside, it often seems as if the Nordic countries are very similar in terms of culture and values. But despite their entangled political and cultural histories, and their cultural similarities, a closer look reveals interesting differences, and this is certainly the case for their professional attitudes to the ethics of collections of…
The privacy of old human remains
Should we consider the privacy of people in the past? Is the concept relevant, or applicable? Is privacy only a concern for the living in our contemporary moment – so obsessed by the boundary between the personal and the private in a constantly marketing and sharing economy, or is privacy a more universal human right?…
Meeting of Minds. Ethical Entanglements and The Human Remains Project in Liverpool….and a gibbet site.
When we discuss ethics with regards to human remains in archaeology and history, we tend to focus on the present, its challenges, its needs, and its sensibilities. How to best care for human remains in museums and research is indeed the fundamental question for Ethical Entanglements. But, what about in the past? How did people…
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