'Redemption Rising: Heritage-Making and Forced Prison Labor in the American South'
Dr. Alisa Santikarn (Postdoctoral Fellow, McDonald Institute of Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge)
Thursday 7th March, 2024
- This is a hybrid event, held at the Seminar Room, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Downing Site and on Zoom
- To join online register here.
The conflict between Thailand and Cambodia over ownership of the Preah Vihear temple has become a key example in discussions on heritage, nationalism, and the role of global heritage organisations like UNESCO. Lost from these overarching narratives, however, are the local impacts on communities living near the disputed border. This talk focuses on the impacts of one such community – the Indigenous Kui Ajiang people, living in Thailand. Taking the starting point of the Preah Vihear temple dispute, the impacts of the resultant border closure on Kui Ajiang heritage will be unpacked, examining how this led to the end of their elephant-catching tradition, and what new spaces for the enactment of heritage emerged in response. Other, more recent, nationalistic heritage debates between Thailand and Cambodia will also be explored, with the Kui people a central part of the issue once more in the Kun Khmer/Muay Thai controversy that punctuated the 2023 South East Asian Games.
Alisa Santikarn is an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre/McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. She also holds a PhD, MPhil and BA (Hons) from the University of Cambridge. This talk builds on her PhD research, The Last Elephant Catchers: (In)Visible Indigenous Heritage in Thailand, which will be published with Amsterdam University Press later this year.
