Our Director wins an ISRF Independent Scholar Fellowship!
It is our pleasure to announce that the Director of The Mixed Museum, Dr Chamion Caballero, has received an Independent Scholar Fellowship from the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF).
Now in its tenth year, the prestigious Fellowship competition invites scholars working outside higher education institutions across Europe to apply for support to undertake innovative research projects. Dr Caballero is one of five Independent Scholars appointed by the ISRF for the period 2022-23. The award will be adminstered by Anglia Ruskin University.
'Communicating Mixedness' project
Support from the ISRF will allow Dr Caballero’s to undertake research that will have exciting benefits for The Mixed Museum. The project ‘Communicating Mixedness’, will use digital technologies to explore how best to share findings into working-class mixed race families in the 19th century with a public audience.
Drawing primarily on 19th century newspapers, Dr Caballero will identify little known accounts of racial mixing in Britain’s cities, towns and shires, such as the Cooper family of south London. In 1837, James Cooper, a Black father, prosecuted his elderly white neighbour after she assaulted him at home, paranoid that James’ 18 year old mixed race daughter Phoebe was having an affair with her 70 year old husband (spoiler alert: she wasn’t).
Dr Caballero says:
I am thrilled to have been granted an Independent Scholar Fellowship by the ISRF, which supports scholars outside academic institutions to embark on innovative and experimental projects such as ‘Communicating Mixedness’. I am really looking forward to using digital platforms to help find and share historical accounts of working class mixed race families in Britain, whose existence sadly seems to be so little recognised outside academic circles.
Public engagement
Rather than the findings displayed at the end of the project, Dr Caballero will use the Museum’s and collaborative partners’ existing and new platforms (e.g. TMM’s website, YouTube channel, our Connected Heritage Wiki work, and our forthcoming Tik Tok account) to share and display the findings as they unfold.
Public engagement with the emerging findings is at the heart of the project and academics and creatives in particular are encouraged to contact Dr Caballero (via The Mixed Museum) to discuss ways in which their own relevant work might contribute to the digital exhibition.
Apply to the ISRF
The ISRF’s 10th annual competition aimed at independent scholars (including those in the arts) is now open for applications (deadline 31 March 2023). The ISRF also offers a number of awards for scholar based at higher education institutions across Europe. Full details of the organisation's work can be found on the ISRF website.