Dr Inbal Livne was awarded her degree in 2014, and is now Curator (Diversifying Collections) at John Rylands Library and Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre, University of Manchester

Last updated: 10 February 2022

About the research

Over eighty percent of Tibetan material now held at the National Museum of Scotland can be provenanced to specific individuals, whose biographies are enhanced and made tangible through the wide array of Tibetan objects they chose to collect.

Inbal Livne’s research explored how collecting Tibetan objects influenced the construction of Tibet in the western imagination and how collectors used them to further their personal, organisational (missionary or military) and imperial desires and expectations.  The Tibetan collections in Edinburgh with those in other Scottish museums make up a mosaic of understandings that are scholarly and personal, local and universal, connecting a physically and intellectually distanced imperial border to the heart of Scottish life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Results from the emerging research were discussed as part of a National Partnerships Knowledge Exchange workshop at the National Museums Scotland (October 2010) and an academic conference at the University of Stirling on '(Mis)representing Cultures and Objects: Critical Approaches to Museological Collections' (May 2014).

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