Event: Weds Talks: Machining the Past: Colonial Hierarchies and Ideology Expressed through Copies, Facsimiles, and Replicas

ABSTRACT: Plaster reproductions of Classical and Mesoamerican archaeological materials displayed at World’s Fairs or universal exhibitions and their connections to colonial perceptions of imperialism and empire. 

BIO: Dr. Caitlin R. O’Grady is a trained conservator and conservation scientist specializing in analysis and preservation of archaeological materials. She is currently Assistant Professor in the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Department of Anthropology and UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage. In this capacity, she teaches and advises undergraduate and graduate students in Anthropology and Conservation, as well as conducts research in the history of conservation and archaeology disciplines. Previously, she held a faculty position at the University College London’s Institute of Archaeology where she taught in the postgraduate conservation programs and managed the FTIR and Raman instrumentation in the Institute’s Wolfson Archaeological Science Laboratories.

Caitlin’s research interests include the disciplinary histories of conservation/conservation science and their intersection with that of archaeology, as well as the preservation and scientific analysis of ceramics, historic conservation materials, lime-plaster wall paintings, and mudbrick.