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About
Vicky is an anthropologist and cultural historian whose research focuses on Papua New Guinea and cultural heritage collections from the ‘contact’ and colonial periods. She joined LSE in September 2025 as a Research Fellow on the three-year AHRC-funded project, Nambawan Piksa Bilong Papua New Guinea / Papua New Guinea’s First Films: Connecting Moving Images from 1904 to Descendant Communities Today, and works with the Project Lead, Prof. Michael Scott of the LSE Department of Anthropology.
Vicky’s research concentrates on the history of the expedition, the films themselves, and related collections, including photographs, objects and drawings. She works closely with the partner institutions in Papua New Guinea – the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies and the National Film Institute – to coordinate the project’s activities. She also liaises with the British Film Institute, the British Museum, and the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, which are supporting the project in the UK.
Previously, Vicky worked on True Echoes, a reconnection project at the British Library that investigated early wax cylinder audio recordings from Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and the Torres Strait Islands. She conducted historical and collections-based research on the expeditions and the colonial, missionary, and academic contexts that led to the creation of the recordings. For her doctoral thesis (University of Oxford, 2019) she undertook research on museum collections from New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, held in the UK, Australia, and Japan. She has also undertaken both archaeological and historical research in New Ireland.
Expertise details:
Oceania; Melanesia; history; material culture; colonialism; cultural heritage; reconnection; museum studies; early history of anthropology; Pacific archaeology
Selected publications:
“The Kapsu Malagans” in L. Bolton, N. Thomas, E. Bonshek, J. Adams and B. Burt. 2013. Melanesia: Art and Encounter. University of Hawaii Press
“Thomas Farrell: Trading in New Guinea” in S. Cochrane and M. Quanchi (eds). 2011. Hunting the Collectors: Pacific Collections in Australian Museums, Art Galleries and Archives. Cambridge Scholars Publishing
“The history of collecting in New Ireland” in M. Gunn and P. Peltier. 2006. New Ireland: Art of the South Pacific. Paris 5Continents https://archive.org/details/8874393695