T&T Cul­tur­al Stud­ies schol­ar Dr Mar­sha Pearce has been named a 2024 British Acad­e­my Glob­al Pro­fes­sors and award­ed £881,950 award for her pi­o­neer­ing project, Trem­bling Abode: Reimag­in­ing the Mu­se­um as Home for Glob­al Ma­jor­i­ty Artists.

She will join the Fitzwilliam Mu­se­um and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge on a four-year as­sign­ment to lead re­search in­to be­long­ing, agency, and in­sti­tu­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion in the mu­se­um world.

“It is an ho­n­our to have sup­port for my re­search through this pres­ti­gious award,” said Pearce who wants to trans­form mu­se­ums from sta­t­ic “hous­es of ob­jects” to ac­tive spaces of so­cial en­gage­ment and in­clu­sion.

“My project is pro­posed at this crit­i­cal time of a dis­man­tling of di­ver­si­ty and in­clu­sion ini­tia­tives at cul­tur­al in­sti­tu­tions, and re­cent gov­ern­ment fund­ing ap­proval to fix the phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture of Eng­lish mu­se­ums—in a sense, ‘putting their hous­es in or­der’,” she ex­plained.

“But what makes a mu­se­um a home? How might we at­tend to is­sues of be­long­ing and rep­re­sen­ta­tion, con­front en­trenched pow­er in­equities, and re­cast what it means to in­hab­it spaces against the grain of set­tler colo­nial con­no­ta­tions?

“I am ex­cit­ed to join the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge com­mu­ni­ty and to col­lab­o­rate with the Fitzwilliam Mu­se­um to ex­plore these ques­tions. I look for­ward to bring­ing Caribbean per­spec­tives to a dy­nam­ic ex­change.”

Dr Pearce is known for her thought-pro­vok­ing work across con­tem­po­rary art, mass me­dia, mu­se­um stud­ies, and spa­tial pol­i­tics. She holds a BA in Vi­su­al Arts and a PhD in Cul­tur­al Stud­ies from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus.

Her re­search and crit­i­cal writ­ings about vi­su­al cul­ture have been pub­lished in sev­er­al art cat­a­logues as well as peer-re­viewed aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nals and books. Her edit­ed book Black Light Void: Dark Vi­sions of the Caribbean (2023), pairs paint­ings with short sto­ries to ex­plore sen­sa­tions of place and iden­ti­ty.

Projects in­clude her col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Na­tion­al Por­trait Gallery Lon­don and the British Coun­cil for the Amer­i­c­as IN Britain—Caribbean Edi­tion cu­rat­ed on­line ex­hi­bi­tion, and her work with the Pérez Art Mu­se­um Mi­a­mi to co-cu­rate the group show The Oth­er Side of Now: Fore­sight in Con­tem­po­rary Caribbean Art.

The British Acad­e­my’s Glob­al Pro­fes­sor­ships sup­port in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised schol­ars in pur­su­ing cut­ting-edge re­search projects in the UK, pro­mot­ing in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion and aca­d­e­m­ic en­rich­ment. Pearce’s se­lec­tion un­der­scores the im­por­tance of am­pli­fy­ing voic­es from the Glob­al Ma­jor­i­ty in reimag­in­ing cul­tur­al in­sti­tu­tions for a more in­clu­sive fu­ture.