Kone funding for Museum Studies doctoral researcher

By Shikoh Shiraiwa

I am sincerely grateful to receive this generous grant to continue my PhD in Helsinki. I did not expect this at all for it took a few days to grasp the reality.

Shikoh's silhouette in the January snow
Shikoh’s silhouette in the January snow

No need to worry about the means of finance, and being able to focus on research is such a privileged position. With all the supports I received from the Finnish National Agency for Education, Kalevala Koru Cultural Foundation, and now the Kone Foundation, I cannot express enough how fortunate that is, more so the generosity of funding a foreign researcher.

Since I started my study in October 2019, moving to Helsinki, my research emphasis has slightly shifted from focusing on the museum’s knowledge-building system to that of the university. If we are to discuss the museums as still-colonial institutions, it requires to discuss the universities because that is where most of us, museum professionals, get education from. Besides, museums and material culture are often divided according to academic disciplines and categorisations, including race and ethnicity.

I would like to echo my fellow PhD colleague and friend Mari expressed in the previous post. It is indeed a great sign that research topics like ours are getting funded more and more. Museums mirror our society and act as one of the most powerful educational institutions to the public. The institutions are demanded to be relevant to the ever-changing society, building heritage that connects the past to the present. Therefore, museums are a crucial agency in society. Like every discipline, our studies are interdisciplinary, intertwined with every field of humanities and beyond. We stand on the idea that the museums can be vehicles helping create a more culturally and socially (and even environmentally) sustainable society.

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