The Sainsbury Research Unit (SRU), based in the Sainsbury Centre at UEA, is a centre for the study of the arts and material culture of Africa, the Pacific region and the Americas.
It has six permanent academic faculty supported by library and administrative staff. Visiting fellows, research associates and postdoctoral researchers working on special projects also contribute to the academic life of the SRU.
It has its own teaching and study facilities and a specialist research library known as the Robert Sainsbury Library, all on hand in the Sainsbury Centre.
Our courses
The SRU offers MA and PhD degrees, with generous scholarships and funding support for students. MRes and MPhil options are available.
It also offers visiting fellowships for postdoctoral scholars and hosts regular conferences, symposia and other academic meetings.
The MA and PhD programmes are intended for those interested in careers in higher education, museums and galleries, publishing, journalism and development.
Our research and teaching
Combining anthropological, art-historical, archaeological and museological approaches, SRU research and teaching are focused on the distinctive cultures of the three regions.
It has a particular focus on how artworks and objects are made, used and circulated – in effect, how they matter to people, both in their original contexts and in the contexts of museums and exhibitions.
As part of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at UEA the SRU contributes to a substantial and lively scholarly community in the Sainsbury Centre.
Our people
Events and News
We are excited to invite everyone to our upcoming seminar on Thursday 21st, 2024, which Dr Rennan Lemos (University of Cambridge) will be presenting. The talk is titled Object Metamorphosis and Alternatives to Colonization in New Kingdom Colonial Nubia (c. 1550-1070 BCE) and you will find details below.
This event can be attended in person or online. For those of you in Norwich, you are most welcome to join us for drinks and dinner at The Unthank Arms afterward.
Venue: Thomas Paine Study Centre 2.04.
Time: 5:00 - 6:30pm GMT.
Link to register to follow online: https://tinyurl.com/y4cyz2mn
Biography:
teaches Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology at the University of Cambridge. He was awarded a British Academy grant to investigate how Egyptian objects behaved in colonized Nubia in the New Kingdom and co-directs the Djehutyhotep Project in collaboration with the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums, Sudan, funded by the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and the Thomas Mulvey Fund, Cambridge. He is also the assistant director of the Sanam Temple Project, responsible for the excavation of the production areas external to the temple of Taharqa, in the fourth cataract area, north Sudan.
Abstract:
The talk explores the local roles played by Egyptian and Egyptian-style objects in colonised Nubia during the Egyptian New Kingdom. Material culture worked as a supporting pillar of Egyptian colonial presence in the Middle Nile Valley. However, by looking closely at (1) the distributions of standardising Egyptian-style objects in local contexts, (2) the nature of adaptations and local uses of these objects, and (3) the local cultural practices connected to them as revealed by laboratory analyses of various materials, a diverse colonial society emerges. The picture of a diverse and complex colonial society in Nubia contradicts, at the same time, ancient Egyptian ideology and modern Egyptocentric approaches to Nubian history and archaeology, while exposing the limitations of approaches solely based on cultural contacts between ‘Egyptian’ and ‘Nubian’ cultures.