Sharon Macdonald Member of »Academia Europaea« and Vice-Chair of the Academic Committee of the House of European History

We warmly congratulate our Cluster Member Sharon Macdonald. The Professor of Social Anthropology with a focus on museums and cultural heritage at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Director of the Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik, has been nominated for membership of the Academia Europaea for her »outstanding achievements as a researcher«. »I was delighted to be nominated and very happy to accept the invitation. As a member, I look forward to contributing to the Academy’s important work,« said Macdonald, who has been conducting research at Humboldt-Universität since 2015.

The Academia Europaea was founded in 1988 and is based in London. It is made up of around 4,500 outstanding European academics and academics trained in Europe, who are nominated by a committee of experts and invited to become members. The aim of the Academy is to promote European research, to advise governments and international organizations on scientific issues and to advance interdisciplinary and international research.

In addition to her membership of the Academia Europaea, Sharon Macdonald was also appointed Vice-Chair of the Academic Committee at the House of European History in Brussels, where she has been a member of the committee since 2019 and was also a special advisor on the project Throwaway. The History of a Modern Crisis. The museum was established in 2017 on the initiative of the European Parliament and provides information about the common past and present of European countries as well as the challenges and opportunities of the future. Here, the social anthropologist will use her expertise to advise the museum’s academic project team on all historical and museological issues.

Sharon Macdonald’s research focuses on the politics and dissemination of cultural heritage, complex histories and contested collections. She is currently working on issues of pluralization and different concepts of heritage, as well as artistic approaches. She holds a chair at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt-Universität, is an honorary professor at the University of Aberdeen, a research associate at the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford and was recently a visiting professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

In Berlin, together with Prof. Eva Ehninger, she heads the Centre for Advanced Study inherit. heritage in transformation, which started in January 2024 and is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research as a Käte Hamburger Kolleg.