Archaeology and History

Photo of Professor Bryony Onciul

Professor Bryony Onciul

Associate Professor of Museology and Heritage Studies

B.A.Onciul@exeter.ac.uk

01326 253763

01326 253763

Overview

Professor Bryony Onciul is an Associate Professor in Museology and Heritage, in the HaSS Department at the University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus. She is a Visiting Professor in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Bryony holds a Future Leaders Fellowship (FLF) and is an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Fellow. She is currently delivering two AHRC funded research grants in Canada and Aotearoa, and she will begin the FLF in 2025.

She researches and publishes on community engagement, decolonizing museology and heritage, difficult histories, truth and reconciliation, identity, performance, understanding place, environment, and the power and politics of representation.

Bryony is the author of Museums, Heritage and Indigenous Voice: Decolonizing Engagement, published by Routledge, and the lead editor of Engaging Heritage, Engaging Communities published by Boydell and Brewer.

Bryony is a Senior Fellow of HEA and teaches modules on heritage, museology, public history, Indigenous history, and environmental change. She established a Postgraduate Programme in International Heritage Management and Consultancy that launched in 2018. Bryony supervises PhD students and welcomes applications related to her research.

Bryony has ongoing funded research. Over her time at Exeter, these projects have included:

  • AHRC Research Partnerships with Indigenous Researchers, Development Grant. The Future of Indigenous Rights and Responsibilities: Ancestral governance, environmental stewardship, language revival, and cultural vibrancy. 2023-2025
  • AHRC Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship. Renewing Relations: Indigenous Heritage Rights and (Re)conciliation in Northwest Coast Canada. 2022-2024
  • UBC Eminence-Funded Culture, Creativity, Health and Well-Being Research Cluster Sub-grant for Gifting together and giving back. 2019-2020
  • Wellcome Centre Exploring the Cultural and Creative Dimensions of Health and Wellbeing through Arts-Based Transformative Engaged Research 2018-19
  • AHRC Troubled Waters - Reaching Out 2017-18
  • AHRC Enduring Connections 2016-18
  • The Exchange Grant Mulliontide 2016
  • AHRC Troubled Waters, Stormy Futures: heritage in times of accelerated climate change 2015
  • AHRC Apologies for Historical Wrongs: When, How, Why? 2014-15

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Research

Bryony’s main research interests include community engagement, heritage, Indigenising and decolonising museology, (post)colonial narratives, difficult histories, identity and performance, understanding place, the effects of climate change on heritage management, the power and politics of representation, repatriation, apologies, truth and reconciliation.



Research collaborations

‘Renewing Relations: Indigenous Heritage Rights and (Re)conciliation in Northwest Coast Canada’ 2022-2023

This project is funded by an AHRC Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship.

‘Gifting together and giving back’ 2019-2020

This project was funded by UBC Eminence-Funded Culture, Creativity, Health and Well-Being Research Cluster. It brought together First Nations Kumugwe Cultural Society members, BC Canada, with MED theatre students in Devon UK, and cross-disciplinary academics to explore museum collections, and engage in workshops on place, performance, culture and wellbeing.  

'Enduring Connections' 2017-2018

This project was funded by AHRC Translating Cultures/Care for the Future Innovation Awards on International Development.

'Troubled Waters - Reaching Out' 2017-2018

This project was funded by AHRC Follow-on Funding for Impact and Engagement (Connected Communities Highlight Notice)

'Mulliontide' 2016-2017

This project was funded by the Exchange Grant. This was an interdisciplinary collaborative project with artist Louise Ann Wilson, theatre company Golden Tree and the National Trust.

‘Troubled Waters, Stormy Futures: heritage in times of accelerated climate change’. 2014 - 2016

This project was funded by the AHRC Care for the Future Early Careers Development Grant . It was an interdisciplinary collaborative project with the University of Exeter, Aberystwyth University, University of Birmingham, Monash University, The National Library of Wales, National Welsh College, Cornish Audio Visual Archives, and The National Trust.

‘Apologies for Historical Wrongs: When, How, Why?’ 2014 - 2015

This project was funded by the AHRC Care for the Future Early Careers Development Grant. This was an interdisciplinary collaborative project with the University of Exeter, University of Surrey, University of Leeds, University of Ulster, Indigeneity in the Contemporary World: Performance, Politics and Belonging, and the Peace and Reconciliation Group.

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Supervision

I welcome interest from potential postgraduate students in any of the following areas, in particular Indigenous history, material cultural, intangible heritage, sense of place, museology and heritage studies:

  • Community engagement in heritage management
  • Cross-cultural dialogue
  • Colonial and postcolonial history
  • Repatriation
  • Apologies for historical wrongs, truth and reconciliation
  • Decolonisation processes
  • Identity, memory, culture and performance
  • Environmental change
  • Sense of place
  • Public History

Research students

Current PhD students:

Amy Shakespeare. Provisional title: 'The Legacy of Material Culture Repatriation on Museum Practice' (First Supervisor)

Donald Luxton. Provisional title: 'Constructing Methodism: The Methodist Building Boom in British Columbia 1887-1894' (First Supervisor)

Tanya Venture. Provisional title: 'Managing Archaeological Loss in the face of Coastal Change' (Second Supervisor)

Previous PhD students:

Alice Would. ‘Taxidermy Time: Fleshing Out the Animals of British Taxidermy in the long Nineteenth Century (1820-1914)' (Second Supervisor)

Lesley Trotter. 'Oceans Apart – Nineteenth century emigration from Cornwall as experienced by the wives ‘left behind’' (Second Supervisor)

Amanda Phipps. ‘Representations of the First World War in Theatre during the Centenary’ (Mentor)

Previous Masters by Research students:

Will Rees. ‘“I Will Not Be Conquered”: Popular Music and Indigenous Identities in North America’ (First Supervisor)

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Publications

Copyright Notice: Any articles made available for download are for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the copyright holder.

| 2024 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2018 | 2017 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 |

2024

  • Onciul B. (2024) Introduction, Engaging Heritage, Engaging Communities, De Gruyter, 1-8, DOI:10.1515/9781782049128-003.
  • Onciul B, O'Kill L. (2024) THE POLITICS OF SPACE HERITAGE Colonising and exploiting the final frontier, The Routledge International Handbook of Heritage and Politics, Routledge, 586-605.

2022

2021

2020

2018

  • Onciul B. (2018) Community engagement, Indigenous heritage and the complex figure of the curator, Curatopia, Manchester University Press, DOI:10.7765/9781526118202.00019. [PDF]
  • . (2018) A Museum Studies Approach to Heritage, Routledge, DOI:10.4324/9781315668505. [PDF]
  • Onciul B. (2018) Community engagement, curatorial practice, and museum ethos in Alberta, Canada, A Museum Studies Approach to Heritage, 714-730.
  • Onciul BA. (2018) Community engagement, Indigenous heritage and the complex figure of the curator: foe, facilitator, friend or forsaken?, Curatopia: Museums and the Future of Curatorship.
  • Woodham A, Penrhyn Jones S, Onciul BA, Gordon-Clark M. (2018) ENDURING CONNECTIONS. HERITAGE, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND CLIMATE CHANGE IN KIRIBATI, Journal of Museum Ethnography, volume 31, pages 199-211.
  • Onciul BA. (2018) Tattoo: British Tattoo Art Revealed and Captain Bligh: Myth, Man, Mutiny at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall from 17 March 2017 to 7 January 2018, Journal of Museum Ethnography, volume 31, pages 256-261.

2017

2015

  • Onciul B. (2015) Museums, Heritage and Indigenous Voice Decolonizing Engagement, Routledge.

2014

  • Onciul B. (2014) Telling hard truths and the process of decolonising indigenous representations in Canadian Museums, Challenging History in the Museum: International Perspectives, 33-46.
  • Onciul BA. (2014) Revitalizing Blackfoot heritage and addressing residential school trauma, Displaced Heritage: Dealing with Disaster and Suffering, Boydell and Brewer.

2013

  • Onciul BA. (2013) Community Participation, Curatorial Practice and Museum Ethos in Canada, Museums and Communities: Curators, Collections and Collaboration, Berg Publishers.

2012

  • Onciul B. (2012) Unsettling Assumptions about Community Engagement: A New Perspective on Indigenous Blackfoot Participation in Museums and Heritage Sites in Alberta, Canada.

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External impact and engagement



Contribution to discipline

Visiting Professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada. 

AHRC Fellow

VP (Membership) and Member of the Executive Committee of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies 2016-2024.

Founder and former Chair of the UK Chapter of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies

Member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College

Senior Fellow HEA

ASPIRE Senior Fellow

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Teaching

Professor Bryony Onciul has been recognised for her outstanding teaching. She holds a Senior Fellowship HEA and is an ASPIRE Senior Fellow. She has been nominated for teaching awards (2013, 2018), and received recognition of excellent in teaching from the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (2017, 2020, 2021). Her modules are innovative, engaging, and informed by her current research. 

Bryony supervises PhD students researching topics related to her research interests and she welcomes inquiries from potential post-graduate and PhD students.

Modules taught

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Biography

Associate Professor Bryony Onciul earned her BA in History and Politics at the University of Nottingham, where she had the opportunity to study at the University of Auckland in Aotearoa New Zealand as part of her undergraduate degree. She earned her MA and PhD at the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, Newcastle University, which included extensive fieldwork in Blackfoot Territories in the area now known as Alberta, Canada.

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