My research interests include:

• History of museums and collections of archaeology, anthropology and Egyptology
• Museum Archaeology
• Museums and source communities
• Contemporary art museum interventions and institutional critique
• The antiquities trade
• Treatment of human remains in museums
• Predynastic Egypt
• Mortuary archaeology and ritual practice

I have two current research projects. The first is a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship examining contemporary artistic interventions in galleries exhibiting ancient Egyptian material culture. The second is a collaboration with the Horniman Museum and Gardens, London, funded by the AHRC; Mobilising collections histories for institutional change.

My previous major projects include the AHRC-funded Egypt's Dispersed Heritage, a programme of dissemination, cultural events, and artistic responses in Egypt and the UK- co-developed with Heba Abd el Gawad and community partners - to increase understanding about the conditions of export of antiquities from Egypt and their legacies today. That project grew out of my AHRC-funded Artefacts of Excavation project which explored the history of finds from British-led excavations in Egypt, published as a web-resource and my open access book Scattered Finds: Archaeology, Egyptology and Museums (UCL Press 2019).

I have a collaboration with Mirjam Brusius (German Historical Institute London) on the 100 Histories of 100 Worlds in One Object project, a long-term, multi-format initiative that provides a response to the British Museum's History of the World in 100 Objects. Other collaborative projects include a new edited volume on Critical Collections Management with Cara Krmpotich (University of Toronto).

I have edited The Oxford Handbook of Museum Archaeology (2022), which brings together some 50 international scholars and professionals to present an original transnational reference point for critical engagements with the legacies of, and futures for, global archaeological collections.