H7: Relational and hyperlocal museologies: museum as matchmaker
Tracks
7
| Wednesday, December 2, 2026 |
| 9:00 AM - 10:15 AM |
| RH104 |
Overview
Stream: Museums, Collections, Returns and Repatriation
Paper / Session Submitter
Dr Harald Fredheim
Lecturer In Museum Studies
University Of York
Relational and hyperlocal museologies: museum as matchmaker
Summary Abstract
The global history of museums can be viewed as a legacy of dispossession and broken relationships. Museums have historically separated objects from their social and cultural contexts, positioned them within foreign knowledge systems and restricted access to collections. This session explores how overlooking (and restricting) relationships in museums interrupts the creation of cultural value and how this interruption can be counteracted by foregrounding relationships and lived experience in museums.
Small museums and hyperlocal initiatives, including pop-up museums, offer important insights into relational museologies grounded in lived experience. Operating as platforms for engagement and shared meaning, they foreground relationships, participation, and everyday practices through close interaction between people, objects, and place.
The session focuses on hyperlocal museologies from around the world that foreground relationships and lived experience, as well as examples of the tensions that emerge when attempting to implement relational museologies based in lived experience at larger museums.
Small museums and hyperlocal initiatives, including pop-up museums, offer important insights into relational museologies grounded in lived experience. Operating as platforms for engagement and shared meaning, they foreground relationships, participation, and everyday practices through close interaction between people, objects, and place.
The session focuses on hyperlocal museologies from around the world that foreground relationships and lived experience, as well as examples of the tensions that emerge when attempting to implement relational museologies based in lived experience at larger museums.
Biographies
Harald Fredheim studied archaeology and conservation before working on various research projects about heritage practices in the UK. His current work is centred around participatory practices in museums.
Jitjayang Yamabhai is a Lecturer at Mahidol University. His research focuses on museum studies, heritage praxis, and cultural transformation, with particular attention to small museums, participatory practice, and everyday relevance of cultural heritage. His work emphasizes practice-based and fieldwork-grounded approaches to contemporary museology.
Stella Basinyi has a multidisciplinary background in Archaeology, Cultural Studies and Heritage Management. Before joining the University of York, she worked and studied at universities in Botswana, Germany and South Africa.
Teerawan Minbualuang is a PhD candidate in Environmental
Studies whose research focuses on ecomuseums as relational, place-based approaches to cultural and natural heritage in ethnic communities. Her work examines how heritage, environmental knowledge, and lived experience support local capacity-building and contribute to sustainable development through ecomuseum-based practice.
Anamaría Rojas Múnera is a Museum curator and educator from Barranquilla, Colombia, interested in the social role of museums, community-based curatorial practices and natural history interpretation. A PhD candidate in Museum and Heritage Studies at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, with a Master of Arts in Museum Studies (University of Leicester) and Bachelor of Arts at Universidad del Norte (Colombia) with a major in International Relations. Vice-Chair of the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Ethnography (ICME), period 2022-2025, affiliated to the International Council of Museums ICOM. Co-founder of the Museums Network of Aysen Region (Chilean Patagonia). Currently, I am a Tour Guide at Zealandia Te Māra a Tāne.
Jane Legget has worked in the heritage sector as a museum professional and academic in Aotearoa New Zealand and Britain. Most recently she has been teaching museum and heritage studies at Massey University and Victoria University of Wellington. Before that she was Head of Research at Auckland War Memorial Museum.
