Lena Muders
Doctoral Candidate
Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies
Research Group Marking Power: Embodied Dependencies, Haptic Regimes and Body Modification
Romm: 3.020
Niebuhrstraße 5
D-53113 Bonn
Phone: +49 228 73 62574
lmuders@uni-bonn.de

Academic Profile
“Andean Skulls - Sensitive Bodies and Embodied Dependencies in Museum Contexts”
In my research project on “Andean Skulls - Sensitive Bodies and Embodied Dependencies in Museum Contexts” (WT), I investigate the handling of human skulls from the Andes in museum institutions in from an anthropological perspective. While I conduct ethnographic fieldwork in and on museums, I cover perspectives and knowledge of experts from museum institutions in Germany and Bolivia with their respective entangled scholarly and museum history. I examine human-thing-relations and embodied experiences of dependency in the moments of collecting, keeping, researching and exhibiting of musealized Andean skulls, who interact with living persons as sensitive “objects” or liminal subjects. Though my emphasis lies on the present, historical contextualisation is necessary to understand the subject-subject/object-relationships that are changing across time and space. I hence raise the following questions: How are Andean skulls in museum institutions constituted as “sensitive objects” or subjects? How can they be handled when repatriation is not an option? How far does their cultural background and current cultural context in the museum impact their handling: whose moralities, knowledge and world perception are considered and to what extent? How do debates and practices of handling of skulls reflect, (re)produce or deconstruct strong asymmetrical dependencies in the context of museum institutions, knowledge management and knowledge production in German and in Bolivian museum institutions?
2020–2023
Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology, Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, University of Bonn, Germany
2016–2020
M.A. in Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Marburg, Germany
2012–2016
B.A. in Anthropology and Archaeology of the Americas, University of Bonn, Germany
2014–2015
Anthropology and Archaeology, University of San Andrés, La Paz, Bolivia
2020–present
Research Associate in Research Group Marking Power: Embodied Dependencies, Haptic Regimes and Body Modification
2018–2019
Tutoring at the Institute for European Ethnology, University of Marburg, Germany
2017–2020
Student assistant, Ethnographic Collection, University of Marburg, Germany
2015–2016
Student assistant, Archaeologic and Ethnographic Collection (BASA), University of Bonn, Germany
2019
Organization of a panel at the international conference "Visions of Future in the Americas", June 12–14, 2019, University of Bonn, Germany
2019
Curatorial Committee, Exhibition "Kollision Azteken Spanier 1519", Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany
2015
Curatorial Committee, Exhibition "Azteken Einst und Heute", Bonner Altamerika-Sammlung, Germany
- 2020. "Ihr, meine Farben, sollt mich schmücken, noch im Tod": Eine Ethnographie des Couleurbandes der Studentenverbindungen. In Am Anfang war das Objekt: Die Ethnographische Sammlung der Philipps-Universität Marburg und die Annäherung an ihre Gegenstände, edited by Schweitzer de Palacios, D., Muders, L., Kaviany, S. Frankfurt a. M..
- 2019. Pflanzen – Menschen – Tiere – Götter. In Kollision 1519 Azteken Spanier: Begleitbuch zur Ausstellung des Lehrforschungsprojekts im B.A Vergleichende Kultur- und Religionswissenschaft der Philipps-Universität Marburg, edited by Muders, L., Braun, K., Hüpper, N.K., Haslach, M. Marburg 2019.
- 2017. Ein Vaterunser aus Ton. In Rheinische Wunderkammer: 200 Objekte aus 200 Jahren Universität Bonn 1818–2018, edited by Herkenrath, K. and Becker, T.. Göttingen.