Welcome to the online home of Dr. Roshi Naidoo, a cultural consultant with over 25 years in museums and archives, dedicated to rethinking power, representation, and the legacies of colonialism.
Introduction
Dr Roshi Naidoo (she/her) has over 25 years of experience working with museums, galleries, archives and campaigning organisations to address issues of power, difference, representation, agency and the intersectional legacies of colonialism. This has included project leadership, curatorial support, drafting policy, archive research, producing learning resources and delivering training workshops. She has published widely and spoken extensively on issues of heritage, memory and nationhood, showing how a nuanced and expansive cultural politics that dares to move beyond the buzzwords, can affect real and lasting change.
Work
Whether you need guidance on cultural policy, decolonisation or representation, Roshi’s support and workshops help institutions to imagine new futures and create real change.
Roshi has a particular interest in the following: firstly, in the ways in which institutional cultural policy in areas of ‘diversity’ and ‘decolonisation’ play out in the everyday work of the arts sector; secondly, in why deep structural change is so elusive; and thirdly, in the complex and unspoken stresses and anxieties that are evoked when ‘race’ and ‘otherness’ enter the frame.
Her workshops aim to explore relevant issues in an environment of shared vulnerability, so that the sector can move towards genuinely equitable and liberating ways of working, and therefore, in turn, contribute perspectives on larger global challenges.
She has worked with an array of institutions large and small –the EU’s House of European History Museum in Brussels, the National Maritime Museum, The Museums Association, Hertfordshire Museums, Tate Britain, the Greater London Authority (GLA) and the Huntley Collection at the London Metropolitan Archive, to name a few. She has also been a trustee and has served on advisory and editorial boards.
She has published widely, including policy pieces, academic journal articles, book chapters, book reviews and blogs. She co-edited (with Professor Jo Littler) The Politics of heritage- the legacies of ‘race’ (Routledge, 2005). Her most recent piece is: Space oddity – bodies out of place in decolonial times – (2024) (sagepub.com)
See Roshi Naidoo – Academia.edu for more.
She has spoken at many public forums, most recently at: • Shining Lights: Photography Symposium, V&A – London (October 5, 2024); • Heritage & Global Challenges Symposium – King’s Manor, University of York (July 10-12, 2024); • International Council of Museums (ICOM) conference, Shanghai – IMREC seminar – Museums, decolonisation and restitution: a global conversation (March 20-21, 2023).
She has a flexible approach to any work in this field and can provide training, talks, curatorial support, project management and research, all delivered with diligence, care and a commitment to listening to the needs and concerns of sector staff and the communities they serve.
Get in touch for an informal chat.
(full CV and references provided on request)
About
Hello – a little more about me.
I started my working life in campaigning, learning all aspects of how to present arguments for change, from media work, to direct marketing, to parliamentary lobbying. I then went into academia, building on my History and American Studies degree from the University of Keele, to complete an MA and PhD in Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham, and worked as a university lecturer teaching Cultural Studies, Media Studies and English Literature.
From there, it was a natural step to take theories about heritage, nations, post-colonialism, feminism, global inequality and intersectional cultural politics into spaces that were at the frontline of shifting these important conversations, and I began delivering projects for museums, galleries and archives, as well as publishing writing that attempted to grapple with the subtleties and contours of this.
A strong thread runs through my work across these sectors – challenging inequality and fighting for everyone’s full humanity to be explored, expressed and represented in all its messy, contradictory forms in our public culture – particularly through art and other cultural practices – so that we can build genuine bonds of solidarity – both interpersonal and international.
I am also a musician – vocalist, guitarist and songwriter.
Thanks for visiting and drop me a line if I can help.
Roshi
Contact
