Profile
Cresa Pugh is Assistant Professor of Sociology at 麻豆传媒色情片 for Social Research. Her research examines the social legacies of imperialism in postcolonial Africa and Southeast Asia, cultural heritage and museums, and violence.听
Using archival and ethnographic data collected across three continents, her first book project, Guardians of Beautiful Things:听The Politics of Postcolonial Cultural Heritage Theft, Refusal and Repair,听examines the politics of cultural theft, specifically thinking through how debates about听artifacts looted from the Benin Kingdom (Nigeria) by British forces now housed in Western museums help us understand and grapple with the vestiges of cultural imperialism. The project interrogates questions of ownership, appropriation and violence through the medium of 16th century brass and ivory artifacts whose displacement continues to serve as an archival record of a dispossessed cultural body. Her research fundamentally examines narratives of restitution and repair and the ways in which healing and the reclamation of memory and communal historiographies materialize in the postcolonial context. Her work sits at the intersection of transnational historical and cultural sociology;听postcolonial theory; materiality; race, ethnicity and indigeneity;听and museum, art history and heritage studies.
She has also conducted research on the colonial roots of the ethnoreligious persecution of the Rohingya by Buddhist extremists in Myanmar.
Degrees Held
PhD Sociology and Social Policy, Harvard University, 2022
MA Sociology, Harvard University, 2019
MSc Migration Studies, Oxford Unviersity, 2013
BA Anthropology and Religion, Bates College, 2004
Professional Affiliation
American Sociological Association
Council for European Studies
Recent Publications
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Pugh, C. (2023). 鈥淗istory of the Present: Assessing Morality Across Temporalities.鈥 In: Hitlin, S., Dromi, S.M., Luft, A. (eds) Handbook of the Sociology of Morality, Volume 2 . Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32022-4_22
Pugh, C. (2023). Review of Africa鈥檚 Struggle for Its Art: History of a Postcolonial Defeat by B茅n茅dicte Savoy,听Africa, Volume 93 (2): 316-318.
Pugh, C. (2023). 鈥溾橞andits into Militants鈥: Unlooting and the Legitimacy of Plundered Cultural Heritage Removal,鈥 Europe Now Journal, Council for European Studies, https://www.europenowjournal.org/2023 /02/21/bandits-into-militants-unlooting-and-the-legitimacy-of-plundered-cultural-heritage-removal/
Pugh, C. (2022). 鈥淭he Migration Trajectory of the Benin Bronzes,鈥 Migration Studies, 10(2): 274-282.听DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnab016
Pugh, C. (2022). Cosmopolitan Repair: Reclaiming and Restoring Cultural Heritage in Postcolonial Nigeria. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies.听DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2022.2080572
Pugh, C. (2022). 鈥淲e Shall Be Telling our own Stories鈥: Bernie Grant, the Africa Reparations Movement, and the Restitution of the Benin Bronzes. Politique africaine 165, 143-166.
Pugh, C.听(2022). 鈥淩elational Reparations: On the Promise of Post-National Repair.鈥澨Postcolonial Interventions, Special Issue: Rethinking Postcolonial Europe: Moving Identities, Changing Subjectivities, 7(1): 50-80. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5923535
Pugh, C.听(2013).听鈥淚s Citizenship the Answer? Constructions of belonging and exclusion for the stateless Rohingya of Burma,鈥 International Migration Institute Working Paper Series, University of Oxford.听 听 听 听 听 听听
Other Media
Pugh, C. (2023). 鈥淭he West Owes Climate Refugees Reparations Now鈥 The Globe Post,听https://theglobepost.com/2023/08/14/west-climate-refugees-reparations/
Pugh, C. (2019). 鈥淐an the International Community Save the Rohingya?鈥 The Globe Post,听https://theglobepost.com/2019/11/26/legal-cases-rohingya/
Pugh, C. (2019). 鈥淩ace, Ethnicity and Culture: How do Rohingya Explain Concepts that Undermine Their Existence?鈥 The Globe Post.听https://theglobepost.com/2019/04/09/rohingya-social-identity/
Pugh, C. (2018). 鈥淚 visited the Rohingya camps in Myanmar and here is what I saw,鈥澨The Conversation,听https://theconversation.com/i-visited-the-rohingya-camps-in-myanmar-and-here-is-what-i-saw-94202
Research Interests
empire, visual and material culture, restitution, colonial violence, Britain, Nigeria, Myanmar