Prof. Dr. Dh. Robin Benville Boast (born 2 March 1956) is the Professor Emeritus at the
University of Amsterdam
The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, ) is a public university, public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Established in 1632 by municipal authorities, it is the fourth-oldest academic institution in the Netherlan ...
, Department of Media Studies.
[https://www.uva.nl/en/profile/b/o/r.boast/r.boast.html University of Amsterdam staff page for Robin Boast][https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2020/communication-media-studies The Department of Mediastudies at UvA is currently ranked #1 in the world by QS] Until the end of 2012 Prof. Boast was an Associate Professor
[https://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/2019-20/weekly/6582/section5.shtml Cambridge Reporter, Joint Report of the Council and the General Board on the titles and structure of academic offices, 18 March 2020] and Curator for World
Archaeology
Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...
at the
. In December 2021, Prof. Boast retired from the University of Amsterdam where he taught for nine years on Cultural Information Science, Neo-colonial information governance, and the history and sociology of digitally and collecting.
He has been a
Visiting Professor
In academia, a visiting scholar, visiting scientist, visiting researcher, visiting fellow, visiting lecturer, or visiting professor is a scholar from an institution who visits a host university to teach, lecture, or perform research on a topic fo ...
at the
European University Institute
The European University Institute (EUI) is an international postgraduate and post-doctoral research-intensive university and an intergovernmental organisation with juridical personality, established by its founding member states to contribu ...
in Florence, a Principal Investigator/Scientific Advisor for several EU projects,
[http://cheurope-project.eu CHEurope Marie Curie Project Webpage][https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/250481 ECLAP (European Cultural Library of Artistic Performance, Cordis EU Website][https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/693857 TRACES EU Project, Cordis EU Website] and was the Director of the
Virtual Teaching Collection Project. Boast has worked in museums in the US and Britain for over 30 years, specializing in museum access, classification and documentation, especially around diverse knowledge communities. Through a program of historical, theoretical and practical inquiry, his research explores forms of informed, collaborative and critical access to museum spaces and collections. Boast is currently working with many indigenous communities around the world that seek to enable and re-centre the many dimensions of
local knowledge
Traditional knowledge (TK), indigenous knowledge (IK), folk knowledge, and local knowledge generally refers to knowledge systems embedded in the cultural traditions of regional, indigenous, or local communities.
Traditional knowledge include ...
expertise within the academy – research informed by the critiques of the
Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) is the study of science as a social activity, especially dealing with "the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity." The sociology ...
, Post-colonial studies, Indigenous Studies and collaborative developments in
e-Science
E-Science or eScience is computationally intensive science that is carried out in highly distributed network environments, or science that uses immense data sets that require grid computing; the term sometimes includes technologies that enable dis ...
.
He has worked for several years on an international research project which subjects the museum and the academy to the ethnographic gaze of indigenous partners to de-centre the ownership and control of research of indigenous patrimony. Prof. Boast has worked with source community museums and heritage organizations with
Ramesh Srinivasan and James Enote, primarily at the
A:shiwi A:wan Museum & Heritage Center in
Zuni,
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...
(USA). Most recently, Boast has been involved with repatriation and archiving projects with the Office of Indigenous Strategy and Engagement,
Flinders University
Flinders University, established as The Flinders University of South Australia is a public university, public research university based in Adelaide, South Australia, with a footprint extending across a number of locations in South Australia and ...
. His recent book projects include ''The Machine in the Ghost: Digitality and its Consequences'', as well as an ongoing book project on Digital Information.
Prof. Boast is the Chair of the EU'
Europeana Research Advisory Board
Publications
* Boast, Robin (2020) Future, What Future?. In schnittpunkt and Joachim Baur (eds.), Das Museum der Zukunft. 43 neue Beiträge zur Diskussion über die Zukunft des Museums (The Museum of the Future, 43 new Contributions to the Discussion about the Future of the Museum), Edition Museum. 48:79-84.
* Boast, Robin (2017
London: Reaktion Books.
* Boast, Robin (2011) Neocolonial Collaboration: Museum as Contact Zone Revisited
34(1):56-70.
* Boast, R. (2002) Computing Futures: A Vision of the Past. In B. Cunliffe, W. Davies and
C. Renfrew (eds.)
Archaeology: the widening debate London,
British Academy
The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences.
It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the sa ...
, pp. 567–592.
* Boast, R. (2002) Pots as Categories: British Beakers. In A. Woodward and J.D. Hill (eds.) Prehistoric Britain: The Ceramic Basis, Oxbow Books, Oxford, pp. 96–105.
* Boast, R, S. Guha and A. Herle (2001) Collecting Sights: the Photographic Collections of the Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, 1850-1970. Cambridge: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology,
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...
.
* Boast, R. (2000) Speculum, Exemplar, Imago. In
A. Lowe & S. Schaffer (eds.)
N01SE: Universal Language, Pattern Recognition, Data Synaesthetics Cambridge, Kettle's Yard.
* Boast, R. (1997) A small company of actors: a critique of style
Journal of Material Culture 2(2):173-198.
* Boast, R. (1997) Virtual Collections. In G. Denford (ed.), Representing Archaeology in Museums, Museum Archaeologist 22:94-100.
* Boast, R. (1995) The Virtual Teaching Collection: Multimedia access to
museum collections
A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying or preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private collections that are used by researchers ...
. Proceedings of "Information: the Hidden Resource, The Seventh International Conference of the
Museum Documentation Association, Edinburgh. Cambridge, Museum Documentation Association, pp. 323–334.
* Boast, R. (1995) Fine Pots, Pure Pots, Beaker Pots. In I. Kinnes and G. Varndell (eds). 'Unbaked Urns of Rudely Shape' Essays on British and Irish Pottery for Ian Longworth, Oxford, Oxbow Monograph 55, pp. 69–80.
Joint publications
* Boast, Robin and Jim Enote (2013) Virtual Repatriation: It's Virtual, but it's not Repatriation. In Peter Biehl and Christopher Prescott (eds.)
Heritage in Context of Globalization: Europe and the Americas New York: SpringerBriefs in Archaeology. 8:103-113.
* Srinivasan, Ramesh, Robin Boast, J. Furner and Katherine Becvar (2009) Digital museums and diverse cultural knowledges: Moving past the traditional catalog.
The Information Society
''The Information Society'' is a Peer review, peer-reviewed academic journal on sociology, that was established in 1981. It is published five times per year by Routledge and covers topics related to information technologies and changes in society ...
. 25(3):.
* Srinivasan, Ramesh, Robin Boast, Katherine Becvar and Jim Enote (2009) Diverse Knowledges and Contact Zones within the Digital Museum. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 34(3): .
* Srinivasan, Ramesh, Jim Enote, Katherine M. Becvar, and Robin Boast (2009) Critical and Reflective Uses of
New Media Technologies in Tribal Museums. Museum Management and Curatorship, 24(2): 169-189.
* Srinivasan, R., R. Boast, K. M. Becvar and J. Furner (2009) Blobgects: Digital Museum Catalogs and Diverse User Communities.
(JASIST), 60(4): 666-678.
References
Information drawn in part from Dr. Boast's blog and his
web page
A web page (or webpage) is a World Wide Web, Web document that is accessed in a web browser. A website typically consists of many web pages hyperlink, linked together under a common domain name. The term "web page" is therefore a metaphor of pap ...
at UvA. Prof. Boast's pages on
Research Gate
/ref>
{{DEFAULTSORT:Boast, Robin
1956 births
Academics of the University of Cambridge
Academic staff of the University of Amsterdam
Historians of science
Living people