If you would like to use the Museum's collections in your own research, please see using our collections.
The Pitt Rivers Museum is a renowned centre for research on material culture, art and photography.
With strong historical links to the teaching of anthropology and archaeology in the University of Oxford, the Museum today seeks to bring together researchers from a variety of disciplines to explore critical themes that connect people all over the world to its rich collections and the histories they hold.
Research News
Landmark publication in New Zealand of the 52 portraits from the 1840s of Maori subjects by Isaac Coates in the Pitt Rivers Museum collection. He ringatoi o nga tupuna, Isaac Coates and his Maori portraits by Hilary and John Mitchell, published in 2021 by Potton & Burton, is the result of years of dedicated research into all known copies of Coates's work around the world.
'The Conservation and Display of the Tahitian Mourner’s Costume at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford' in M.M. Brooks and D.D. Eastop (eds.) Refashioning and Redress: Conserving and Displaying Dress. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2017.
'Calibrating relevance at the Pitt Rivers Museum', in J. Pellew and L. Goldman (eds.) Dethroning historical reputations: universities, museums and the commemoration of benefactors. London: University of London, Institute of Historical Research, 2018. (PDF)
‘The graphicalization of description: drawing and photography in the fieldwork journals and museum work of Henry Balfour’, Anthropology and Photography, Vol. 10 (London: Royal Anthropological Institute). (PDF)
Dan Hicks
The Brutish Museums: the Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution (Pluto Press 2020)
![[2013.6.6] Te Ranguira and her husband Rangihaeata. By Isaac Coates, 1840s.](https://prm.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/styles/listing_breaker_image/public/prm000128264.jpg?itok=TgGoQLYj "[2013.6.6] Te Ranguira and her husband Rangihaeata. By Isaac Coates, 1840s.")
