ISRF Independent Scholar Fellow 2023
ISRF Independent Scholar Fellow 2023
Dr Chamion Caballero is the Director and co-founder of The Mixed Museum, an award-winning digital museum that shares and preserves the history of racial mixing in Britain (www.mixedmuseum.org.uk). She was previously a Reader at the Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research, London South Bank University and has held Senior Visiting Fellow posts at the London School of Economics, and Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research interests include race, ethnicity and qualitative methods and she has contributed to numerous journal articles and reports in this area, including for the Department for Education, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and the Runnymede Trust. Her historical research with Peter Aspinall on mixed race Britain formed the foundations of the 2011 BBC2 series Mixed Britannia, on which she also acted as an academic consultant.
Despite a considerable body of excellent academic scholarship on the history of mixed race people, couples and families in Britain that highlights their presence as far back as the sixteenth century, in the public sphere this history largely lies unknown and unengaged with, or misunderstood. This project thus seeks to interrogate how we can better ‘communicate mixedness’ to enhance public knowledge around the history of racial mixing in Britain.
It will do so by piloting an innovative ‘digital micro model’ teaching and learning approach, via the platform of the digital heritage organisation The Mixed Museum (MM) and its ‘Connected Heritage’ (CH) partnership with Wikimedia. Existing and new scholarship on accounts of racial mixing in nineteenth century will be 1. Embedded (into MM and Wikipedia), 2. Shared (via videos created for TikTok and YouTube Shorts) and 3. Engaged with (via ‘micro learning’ modules on the MM site). The quantitative and qualitative data emerging from the project will provide insights into the potential of such digital micro models to help move scholarly findings of marginalised histories from behind paywalls and more firmly into the sphere of the general public. The ‘micro learning’ aspect of the project also aims to help equip its general audience not just with new historical subject knowledge, but inspiration and new learning on how to apply research skills and use digital technologies to find out about or share their own family or community histories.
If you would like to contact any of our Fellows to discuss their ISRF-funded work, please contact Dr Lars Cornelissen (Academic Editor) in the first instance, at lars.cornelissen@isrf.org.