Rick Bonnie

Education information

MA in Archaeology, Leiden University, The Netherlands (2008); PhD in Archaeology, University of Leuven, Belgium (2014); Docent in Archaeology, University of Helsinki, Finland (2021)

Description of research and teaching

I am University Lecturer in Museology in the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki, where I teach on museum history, collection work, and community engagement, among other things. My research interests include museum and heritage ethics, object biographies, decolonisation and provenance issues, museum collection histories, and sensory archaeology. 

I recently led two funded projects. The project "Making Home Abroad: Understanding Migrant Experiences and Heritage Implementation in Finland," funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation, engaged communities with stored-away Middle Eastern objects in Finnish museum collections through 3D scanning technologies, teaching toolkits, and pop-up museums. The project "Religious Responses to Climate Change in the Southern Levant," funded by a UH 3-year project, studied the impact of past climatic changes on the rise and fall of Jewish ritual purification baths in Hasmonean-Roman Judaea through hydrological modelling and contextual archaeological analysis. In addition, I was also a co-PI of the NOS-HS Workshop series "Changing Hands, Changing Meanings: Researching Cultural Heritage Trafficking in the Nordic Region," in coordination with researchers at the universities of Agder, Stockholm and Turku.

I have been a founding member of the Centre of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires (2018-25), as well as steering committee member in the Una Europa focus area on Cultural Heritage (2019-2025).

(Photo by Lauri Laine.)