I am a settler critical information studies scholar, and my research investigates the connection between documentation, culture, and technology. I teach in the iSchool graduate program, and I teach two classes in the Informatics Minor: INFO 200: Foundations of Information and INFO 301: Digital Cultural Collections.

I am concerned with how knowledge is made and controlled, the use of digital technologies in creating and curating information, and how we can create better access to information resources like museums. I research the history of ethnographic museums and how they reproduce legacies of colonialism, and my book, Cataloguing Culture (UBC Press, 2020) is a history of documentation practices and the classification and the cataloguing of material culture collections in the Smithsonian’s Department of Anthropology.

I am also interested in how technologies can be used ethically for better practice between museums and originating communities. I work on several collaborative digitization and curatorial projects, and I have published on the politics of digital access, the decolonization of museum databases, learning with 3D printing, and the organization of knowledge in museums.

I was a Lecturer in Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, and a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Making Culture Lab at SFU. I completed my doctorate in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto in 2015. I sit on the board of the YVR Art Foundation.

• Information practices in museums
• Cataloguing and classification
• Documentation and reparative work
• Digital cultural heritage
• Feminist/ BIPOC theory
• Digital preservation and repatriation
• Histories of science and technology
• Creative digital heritage work

Books

• Hannah Turner. Cataloguing Culture: Legacies of Colonialism in Museum Documentation.  UBC Press, 2020 [link]

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

2019 “Wrapped in the Cloud: An Interview with Meghann O’Brien and Conrad Sly.” Introduction by Hannah Turner and Kate Hennessy. Edited by Hannah Turner, Kate Hennessy, Meghann O’Brien (Jaad Kuujus) and Conrad Sly. BC Studies, 50th Anniversary. Invited, Pages Forthcoming.

2017 “Organizing Knowledge in Museums: A Review of Concepts and Concerns.” Knowledge Organization: Knowledge Organization within the Museum Domain, Special Issue. 44 No.7: 472-84.

2017 Turner, Hannah, Gabby Resch, Adam K. Dubé, Rhonda McEwen, Isaac Record, and Daniel Southwick. “Using 3D Printing to Enhance Understanding and Engagement with Young Audiences: Lessons from Workshops in a Museum.” Curator: The Museums Journal, 60(3): 311-33.

2016 “Introduction to the Special Issue: Critical Histories of Museum Catalogues.” Special Issue: Critical Histories of Museum Catalogues, edited by Hannah Turner. Museum Anthropology 39 (2): 102-10.

2016 “The Computerization of Material Culture Catalogues: Objects and Infrastructure in the Smithsonian Institution’s Department of Anthropology.” Special Issue: Critical Histories of Museum Catalogues, edited by Hannah Turner. Museum Anthropology 39 (2): 163-177.

2015 “Decolonizing Ethnographic Documentation: A Critical History of the Early Museum Catalogs at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.” Special Issue: Indigenous Approaches to Cataloging, edited by Cheryl A. Metoyer and Ann M. Doyle. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53 (5–6): 658–76.

Book Chapters

2019 Forthcoming. Hennessy, Kate and Hannah Turner. “Digital.” Handbook of Visual Methods in Anthropology. Edited by Rupert Cox and Chris Wright. London & New York: Routledge.

2019 In press. Turner, Hannah and Candace Greene. “New Access to Native North American Collections in Museums and Archives: History, Context and Future Directions.” In Volume 1 of the Handbook of North American Indians (HNAI), edited by Igor Krupnik. Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press: Washington: DC. Pages forthcoming.