Sophie Everest
PhD Research
Working title: Thinking through antelopes: Film, taxidermy and the museum
Practice-based PhD
My research explores the relationship between taxidermy objects, film and the museum. The thesis and practice stem 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 is 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 am 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.
Contact: Sophie.Everest@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk