Dr Sophie Everest
Working title: Thinking through antelopes: Film, taxidermy and the museum
Practice-based PhD
My research explored the relationship between taxidermy objects, film and the museum. The thesis and practice stemmed from a group of mounted antelopes held at the Manchester Museum, donated by Lord Egerton of Tatton Hall in Cheshire between the 1920s and the 1950s. Film was used as part of a toolkit for thinking through this group of animal-objects and the assemblage of people, things, places and practices involved in their lives, deaths and artefactual afterlives. I was particularly interested in the potential of film to communicate both the lives of objects and museological practice past and present.
Biography
After studying English literature and language at Oxford University, I worked as a television Researcher for independent production companies and the BBC. For five years I worked as an Associate Producer in BBC Current Affairs, on programmes such as Real Story and Panorama.
In 2009 I decided to pursue my lifelong interest in museums and collections and completed an MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies at Manchester. During my MA I further developed my particular interest in the cultural histories of zoological collections. I was delighted to be awarded AHRC funding to undertake my PhD studies at the Centre for Museology at Manchester. I am supervised by Dr Helen Rees Leahy from the Centre for Museology and Dr Petra Tjitske Kalshoven from the department of Social Anthropology at Manchester.
Publications
“Under the skin: The biography of a Manchester mandrill”, in The Afterlives of Animals: A Museum Menagerie, ed. Samuel J.M.M. Alberti (University of Virginia Press) 2011.