New Initiative by the Centre for the Anthropology of World Cultures

Objects in Dialogue

The Centre for the Anthropology of World Cultures (CAWC) is pleased to introduce Objects in Dialogue, a new series developed from Object of the Month, an initiative created by students in Archaeology and History of Art at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi. The series remains student-led in practice, with our students serving as contributors, co-researchers, co-curators, and facilitators of the conversations that each object generates. Lead by students from Archeology and History of Art and Marketing, Communication and Media, the initiative welcomes perspectives from across the SUAD community.

Throughout the academic year, selected objects from the CAWC collection will be displayed in a prominent location in the library. Building on the student-led spirit of Object of the Month, students in Art History and Archaeology will continue to play an active role in Objects in Dialogue by researching objects, developing interpretive questions, contributing texts, working with invited participants, and helping shape the ways in which objects are presented and discussed.

Each presentation invites members of the SUAD community to pause, look closely, and consider how an object can carry many forms of knowledge. Textiles, garments, tools, musical instruments and ritual objects may speak of identity, memory, skill, belief, movement, exchange, and social relations. Their meanings are not fixed. They change through making and use, through inheritance and preservation, and through the ways in which they are collected, studied, displayed, and remembered.

Each object brings several voices into conversation. Students, researchers, cultural practitioners, community members, and industry experts are invited to respond from their own experience and expertise. Alongside collection research, contributors may explore what the object evokes, the practices to which it relates, the questions it raises and the memories or cultural connections it makes possible.

Selected contributions will be presented in the library display and developed into short essays for the CAWC website. The series will also include occasional short talks by scholars, makers, practitioners, and community representatives, placing individual objects within wider cultural, historical, and contemporary contexts.

Objects in Dialogue does not seek a single, definite interpretation. Instead, it makes the process of interpretation visible by asking what is known, what is remembered, what is contested, and what remains to be learned. The initiative continues the work of the students who created Object of the Month, while expanding its collaborative reach and creating a space for careful exploration, respectful exchange, and shared responsibility for how cultural heritage is understood, curated and transmitted.

For additional information, please contact Christophe Moulherat or Ivana Beveridge.