Faculty-led Research Team
Team Lead: Lauren Kroiz, Associate Professor, History of Art Department, and Faculty Director, Phoebe A. Hearst Museum, UC Berkeley
Under the direction of Dr. Lauren Kroiz, graduate student researcher Pilar Jefferson (Ethnic Studies), and Katie Fleming, Gallery Manager & Education Coordinator at the Hearst Museum, will conduct research across the disciplines of Anthropology, Ethnic Studies, and Museum Studies. Their project aims to broaden the reach of new initiatives at the Hearst Museum linking natural resource protection with contemporary Indigenous art and culture. The project will start in the summer of 2021 and continue through the 2021-2022 academic year. It will have three interconnected phases (a digital timeline, an interview series, and educational resources for undergraduate courses and K-12 students) related to the Hearst Museum exhibition, “The Sea Tore in Two Ways.” The timeline phase of the project will aid the researchers in looking back at the museum’s history to understand its changing relationships with Indigenous communities. In the interview phase the researchers will interview local Indigenous community members and campus faculty and staff, working with them to gather data on what environmental protection challenges Indigenous people are facing and how museums can help them achieve their goals. Finally, the educational resources will take their information from data collected in the first two initiatives to show how museums can be sites to support Indigenous-led environmental activism now and in the future.