Robin Boast

Who is Robin Boast?

Dr. Robin Boast is the Deputy Director of the Museum and the Curator

for World Archaeology. He coordinates the MPhil Graduate Course on

Museums: History, Theory and Practice in the Department of Archaeology

and is the Lecturer for the History of Science in Archaeology. He

lectures on the history and sociology of scientific practice in the

Department of Geography and is a Senior Research Associate in the

Faculty of History and Philosophy of Science. He was the Director of

the innovative Virtual Teaching Collection Project in the 1990s, and

more recently a Visiting Professor at the European University Institute

in Florence Italy, Director of the Local Knowledge and Diversity

Research Group for Web 2.0 local knowledge systems, a member of the

Museum Documentation Association Standards Committee, and a member of

the Museum, Libraries and Archives Council (DCMS) Web Advisory Group.

He has 38 years of experience in computer (and later on-line) access to

museums and has been an expert advisor to the EU, British Government

and numerous museums and heritage organizations.

Personal Research Statement:

My research centres on the disciplinary gap between knowledge practices

and technologies (including but not limited to ICT), anthropology,

history and philosophy of knowledge and sociology of technology. I am

primarily interested in those institutions and their technologies which

maintain and collect knowledge, or at least claim to. I’m interested in

the ongoing and changing traditions of managing, sharing, transforming

and communicating knowledges. This is why my research has to bridge so

many disciplines, it’s not by choice, but traditional knowledge

practices, which includes the contemporary sciences and technologies,

are practices that have deep historical traditions and a dynamic

contemporary life.

My work is not simply about exploring and writing about these histories

and practices, but is deeply 'immersive', though I always just thought

of it as getting mucked in and having fun. I believe profoundly that it

is important to make things and be a part of the practices and

constructions that constitute and enable knowledge. So I also build

systems, all open source, that organize and enact knowledge sharing. My

most recent work has been with museums and heritage organizations in

Zuni, New Mexico (USA) and Nunavut (Canada). Between these sites and

the Museum in Cambridge we are exploring what could be called Web 2.0

systems that facilitate and sustain the collecting and sharing of

knowledges within the local communities, of which the Museum in

Cambridge is one, and the enabling of the performances and dialogues

that are necessary for the sharing of these knowledges between

institutions and communities.