In the context of museums, human remains are unique. Though formally and legally encompassed by the Act concerning the cultural heritage, they still come between the crossroads of being, as Liv Nilsson Stutz has defined it, “objects of science and lived lives” (Stutz 2023: 1064–1065).
The main objective of this interdisciplinary project is to examine how human remains in museums are utilised in the dissemination of knowledge and research, and to explore what forms of ethical encounters occur during these processes.
The project endeavours to investigate in what ways human remains are used in museum spaces as representations of material culture, scientific objects and lived lives. The purpose is to critically reflect over what museums want to accomplish when these institutions decide to put human remains on display.
What narratives or themes are they presenting? What forms of ethical challenges appear in the process of displaying human remains? Are all human remains in museums considered equal?
To what degree is it possible to identify variations in the treatment of human remains within museum exhibitions that are dependent factors such as knowledge about the human remains in terms of cultural belonging, religious affiliation, ethnicity, and origin, the materiality of the remains, i.e. their physicality and state of the body and identified versus anonymous human remains?