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profdanhicks.bsky.social
Dan Hicks
@profdanhicks.bsky.social
13K followers 1.3K following 730 posts
Museum Curator and Professor of Contemporary Archaeology, Oxford University • Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford • Tutor Art/Anthropology • https://linktr.ee/danhicks
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profdanhicks.bsky.social
What a wonderful night in Edinburgh @lighthousebks.bsky.social 💥🙏
November 8, 2025 at 11:05 AM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
💥
November 5, 2025 at 1:29 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
earlier this year a Swedish archaeologist launched an ad hominem attack on me in the International Journal of Cultural Property

I'm grateful to the editors for inviting my right to reply—and the opportunity to correct the record

www.academia.edu/144803887/On...
or
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
On "Distorting History" - a reply to Staffan Lundén Earlier this year a Swedish archaeologist based at Gothenburg University’s Centre for Critical Heritage Studies published an unfounded ad hominem attack on me in the pages of the International Journal of Cultural Property. I am grateful to the editors for this right to reply to Staffan Lundén’s wholly spurious claims, and order to correct the record. Despite its provocative, “clickbait” title, not one substantive mistake or incorrect fact was identified in Lundén’s article in my book “The Brutish Museums”. The motivation for Lundén’s serial accusations against colleagues with whose scholarship on the history of the Benin Expedition he disagrees - from curators at the British Museum to members of the Royal Court of Benin - is discussed. In conclusion, the allegation that my book The Brutish Museums is “part of a trend away from pro-British perspectives” is contextualised and refuted. On the contrary, this reply argues, openness and transparency about the colonial past and present is a key element of the reclamation and reimagining of Britishness that is unfolding in the 2020s – this unfinished period that the book calls “the decade of returns”.
November 5, 2025 at 11:40 AM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
Thank you @jeremycorbyn.bsky.social for these kind words about my book The Brutish Museums at today's meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Afrikan Reparations in London 🙏💥
October 18, 2025 at 7:12 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
"Grounded, textured, and often beautifully wry" - thank you Lee Bilson for this mini-review of #everymonumentwillfall on LinkedIn
October 17, 2025 at 5:47 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
Thank you again to Cité University for hosting me to talk about #everymonumentwillfall this evening
October 15, 2025 at 8:58 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
Paris, tomorrow (Weds) 5pm Cité University undisciplinedecoloniserepair.wordpress.com/next-event/
October 14, 2025 at 8:40 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
Protest of an 1892 painting "First Tribute to Christopher Columbus" in Madrid’s Naval Museum www.news.com.au/national/spa...
October 14, 2025 at 1:15 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
“Britain must never become a multicultural country” — the absolute state of the UK’s Official Opposition right now
conservativehome.com/2025/10/08/f...
October 9, 2025 at 10:16 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
(2/2) sign the petition: Tell Your MP: Don't Rip Up Our Rights actionstorm.org/petitions/pr...
October 8, 2025 at 9:06 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
Great to see this cross-community response to Mr Jenrick
October 7, 2025 at 9:54 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
Veteran statue-hugger and former letter-writer to museums pitching to be the next pound-shop Enoch Powell

every Brummie understands what racist trash this is from the Shadow Lord Chancellor—and if you don’t know our second city here’s your prompt to pay a visit!

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
October 7, 2025 at 8:40 AM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
💥this Wednesday, 3pm — me and @profsunnysingh.bsky.social in conversation with Jendella Benson at the Henley Literary Festival
tickets >> www.henleyliteraryfestival.co.uk/whats-on/hic...
October 5, 2025 at 12:50 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
next time you hear someone talking about culture warriors attacking our museums remind them of this

“The request for a gift for King Charles came from a State Department liaison using the email address giftgirl2025 and initially told the museum that they were looking for “like a sword or something”
After Declining to Give Trump a Sword for King Charles, a Museum Leader Is Out The departure of Todd Arrington, who led the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, came after the administration sought a sword from its collection as a gift for King Charles. The request for a gift for King Charles came from a State Department liaison who used the email address "giftgirl2025" and initially told the museum that they were looking for "like a sword or something," according to a person familiar with the discussions. As it happens, shortly before the Trump administration's failed efforts to secure a sword from the Eisenhower library, two other Eisenhower swords went on view in a temporary display at the Nixon library. According to a news release, they are on loan from Julie Nixon Eisenhower, a daughter of President Nixon, who married the grandson of President Eisenhower. They include a "Sword of Honor" given to him in 1947 by the City of London
October 3, 2025 at 9:09 AM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
💥
September 26, 2025 at 7:56 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
💥AUTUMN BOOK TOUR💥

#everymonumentwillfall in Oxford, Brighton, Paris, Cork, Dublin, Belfast, Edinburgh, Durham, Bristol, London (x3), Nottingham

dates throughout Oct-Nov 2025

details/tickets >> danhicks.uk/talks
September 26, 2025 at 6:52 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
#everymonumentwillfall
heatre of operation, Europe included These histories are closer than you might think. They're not even histories. I mean, this is about the here and now. And yet you still sometimes hear people talking about 'postcolonialism', as if coloni-alism, in these many different forms, were simply over. Just open a newspaper or doomscroll your social media, from Russian imperialism in Ukraine, to Israel's mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, to a newly confident far right in Germany, Britain and the United States. The question of whether the idea of postcolonialism was ahis-torical, de-politicising or simply overly optimistic was discussed quite a lot in the Nineties. Scholars like Anne McClintock questioned how it seemed to involve an 'entranced suspension of history', suggesting that in reality 'colonialism returns at the moment of its disappearance. Arif Dirlik argued the term was even 'celebratory of the so-called end of colonialism' - since it implied that the project of 'decolonisation' in the post-war period was genuine rather than spurious or partial.' Today the idea of 'postcolonialism' is best classed alongside that other fin-de-siècle narrative, the right-wing claim of 'the end of history', which was the counterpart of the story of the fall of the Berlin Wall as a last victory for capitalism as if it brought wars to an end. Call it late colonialism if you like, whether in war, securitisation and policing, in cultural policy or culture war, but call it colonialism. A nostalgia for that theoretical prefix 'post' is now obstructing understanding and explanation of this ongoing militarism.
September 26, 2025 at 4:02 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
A Florida university is putting up a statue to Charlie Kirk. More monuments will doubtless follow. The analogies some are drawing with the Reichstag fire miss the point. The analogy is clear, it’s a history I discuss on page 82 of #everymonumentwillfall — the Schlageter Cult ☠️
September 23, 2025 at 5:51 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
✨ look what just arrived from @politybooks.bsky.social — fabulous translation of my dear colleague Bénédicte Savoy’s latest book Who Owns Beauty
September 22, 2025 at 8:01 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
🌧️🌧️🌧️🙃
September 20, 2025 at 7:56 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
it was a very very very wet day in North Wales but nonetheless a very lovely 8k loop around Llyn Padarn ✨🌧️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿
September 20, 2025 at 6:17 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
And a brilliant talk by @helenbeaumont.bsky.social of @nmireland.bsky.social about the projects We Make Our Own History, and A Flag for Ireland
September 17, 2025 at 1:39 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
a great talk by Mariano Gilmore from the National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, on “how three blocks can change your entire perspective about museums” #museumideas
September 17, 2025 at 1:36 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
afternoon session at #museumideas kicking off with Hanouf Al-Alawi talking about “co-production with young people” at the British Museum
September 17, 2025 at 12:46 PM
profdanhicks.bsky.social
and fourth up a storming talk by Guilia Gregnanin, Director of @timespanhelmsdale.bsky.social , about “redefining the museum as a shared resource“ #museumideas
September 17, 2025 at 10:43 AM