Gabriela Domené López

My PhD research – which began October 2022 – follows objects from Latin America to Aberdeen, identifying prior circulation in Latin America, while being attentive to objects’ changing meanings and relational histories. I trace objects, itineraries, and biographies investigating the relationships, agencies, and knowledge exchanges between Scots and colonised people which characterised material imperialism in Latin American contexts.

The University of Aberdeen Latin American collections are the largest of any Scottish university and third largest in Scotland, yet are notably understudied, making them an overlooked resource for understanding Scottish and Latin American encounters and ways to make evident and decolonise obscure imperial networks. Focusing on how archaeological, ethnographic, and herbarium objects were acquired, I examine lost histories of transatlantic interactions and power relationships through the lives of Scottish donors and collectors, Latin American guides and makers, and the objects that bind them in long-standing connections that continue to this day.

While material legacies of empire have never been more prominent in contemporary debate, the significance of collections from ‘informal’ imperial and colonial relations between Britain and Latin America have been largely overlooked. I use Latin American collections donated to the University of Aberdeen’s museums to illuminate the power dynamics of Scottish collecting practices and collection usage within the context of the ‘informal’ British Empire after the Latin American Wars of Independence through to the Second World War. Emphasising the roles of people and objects connected to Aberdeen within imperial, material and social networks reaching Latin America, and focusing on a key period.