Marzia Varutti

About Marzia Varutti

I am a museologist working at the intersection of environmental humanities, emotion studies, and ecocriticism. 

My recent and current research develops around a few interconnected strands: 

- the role of emotions in the environmental crisis (with a focus on ecological grief); 

- emotions in museums (theoretical perspectives on the affective turn in museums; emotion work; hope and awe experiences); 

- ecocriticism (ecopoetry as environmental communication); 

- science-humanities collaborative research (glaciers as biocultural heritage); 

- affective research methodologies.

I have previously written on a range of topics in museum and cultural heritage studies, including relationships between museums and Indigenous Peoples (specifically in Taiwan), the social role of museums, and various aspects of the politics of representation in museums. 

Field research: Taiwan; China; Norway; shorter stays in British Columbia; Belize.

Previous academic positions: Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, Norway (Associate Professor in Museology and Cultural History, 2016-21; Research Council of Norway Postdoctoral fellow); Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva (EU Horizon 2020 Marie S. Curie Individual Fellow); School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, UK (Arts and Humanities Research Council Early Career Fellow).

Visiting researcher: Center for Critical Heritage Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden; the Graduate School of Museum Studies, Taipei National University of the Arts, Taiwan; College of Indigenous Studies, Donghwa University, Taiwan; Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver; Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, UK.

Teaching experience: at BA, MA, PhD levels, in cultural history; museology; cultural heritage studies. Academic administration: coordinator, Master in Museology and Cultural Heritage, University of Oslo (2017-21). PhD supervision; PhD opponent; PhD committee administrator.

List of Publications 

Books

2014 Museums in China. The politics of representation after Mao, ‘Heritage Matters’ series, Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. ISBN 9781843838883 https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781843838883/museums-in-china/ 

Edited Volumes and Journal Special Issues

2015 ‘Rethinking Sámi cultures in museums’, co-editor with Eva Silvén, Silje Opdahl Mathisen and Rossella Ragazzi, special issue, Journal of Nordic Museology 2. https://journals.uio.no/museolog/article/view/3043 

Book Chapters

2025 ‘Emotions in Collaborative Museum Practice’ in Collaboration and Co-Creation in Museums, Heritage, and the Arts, Anna Edmundson and Maya Haviland (eds), London: Routledge. P. 302-15.https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003222804-27/emotions-collaborative-museum-practice-marzia-varutti 

2025 (co-authored with Geoffrey Gowlland) ‘Museums as sites of Indigenous Revitalisation’ in The Museum in Asia, Cai Yunci (ed), London: Routledge. Pp.221-34.

2023 “Poetry and ecological awareness. Inspiration from Pierluigi Cappello’s poetry”, in Poetry and the Global Climate Crisis: Educational Creative Approaches to Complex Challenges, Amatoritsero Ede, Sandra Lee Kleppe and Angela Sorby (eds), p. 222-232. London: Routledge https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003399988-22/poetry-ecological-awareness-marzia-varutti 

2021 “Affective Encounters in Museums”, in Þóra Pétursdóttir and Torgeir Rinke Bangstad (eds) Heritage Ecologies, London: Routledge. P.129-144. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315101019-11/affective-encounters-museums-marzia-varutti 

2019 ‘Gradients of alterity: museums and the negotiation of cultural difference in contemporary Norway’ in Watson, Sheila, Amy Barnes, and Katy Bunning (eds). A Museum Studies Approach to Heritage. London: Routledge. P.527-542. DOI: 10.4324/9781315668505-41 

2013 ‘Learning to share knowledge. Collaborative projects between national and indigenous museums in Taiwan’, in Golding V. & Wayne M. (eds), Museums and Communities: Curators, Collections and Collaboration, 59-78. Oxford: Berg.

2011 ‘Towards social inclusion in Taiwan: museums, equality and indigenous groups’, in R. Sandell & E. Nightingale (eds) Museums, Equality and Social Justice, London: Routledge.

2011 ‘Standardising difference: narratives of national and ethnic identities in the museums of the Peoples' Republic of China’ in Dudley S. et al. (eds), The thing about museums, London: Routledge.

2010 ‘The aesthetics and narratives of national museums in China’ in Aronsson P.,
 Bugge Amundsen A. 
& 
Knell S. (eds), National Museums. London: Routledge.

2010 ‘Indexes of exclusion: absence and silences in Chinese ethnic minority museums’ in Guntarik O. (ed) Narratives of Community: Museums and Ethnicity, Edinburgh: MuseumsEtc.

Refereed journal articles

2026. ‘The Affective Affordances of Ecopoetry. Notes from Simon Armitage’s Cryosphere’, Ecozon@, European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, Spring, 17(1).

2026. ‘The Social Life of a Wood: a Biographical Approach to Human-Place Relations at the Bois Chamblard, Switzerland’, Landscape History. 

2025 with Mauro Gobbi and Daniel Gaudio. ‘Losing glaciers: a call for emotional engagement and expanded collaboration in research on the ecological crisis’, The Anthropocene Review 12(2), 327-335. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/20530196251334762

2025 Varutti, M. Daniel Gaudio, Mauro Gobbi, ‘Shifting Baseline Syndrome (SBS) could limit the emotional connection to the historical photography of glacier changes’, BioScience, 2025; biaf070, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaf070 

2025 ‘(Re-)Learning to Relate to the more than human: some conceptual, affective and practice-based perspectives’, Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society. 49(2), 41–59. https://doi.org/10.30676/jfas.141513 

2024 ‘Awe in the Museum: Casting Light on the Role of the Curator’, in Museum Management and Curatorship, 41(1):3–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2024.2331442

2023 ‘Claiming ecological grief: Why are we not mourning (more and more publicly) for ecological destruction?’, Ambio. A Journal of Environment and Society, 53, 552–564. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-023-01962-w 

2023 ‘Anthropocenic Emotions’, NiCHE, Network in Canadian History & Environment, 9 May. https://niche-canada.org/2023/05/09/anthropocenic-emotions/ 

2023 ‘The Affective Turn in Museums and the Rise of Affective Curatorship’, Museum Management and Curatorship,38:1, 61-75, https://doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2022.2132993.

2020 ‘Vers une muséologie des émotions’, Cultures et Musées, 36:171-177. Online: https://journals.openedition.org/culturemusees/5751 

2018 "‘Authentic reproductions’: museum collection practices as authentication", Museum Management and Curatorship 33(1): 42-56.

2017 ‘Materializing the past: mannequins, history and memory in museums. Insights from the Northern European and East-Asian contexts’, in A.S. Hjemdahl and S. Opdahl Mathisen (eds) Bodyworks, Journal of Nordic Museology, special issue, vol 1, pp.5-20.

2016 ‘A kaleidoscopic vision: exhibiting and imagining the Viking Past in Fra Istid Til Kvitekrist’, Primitive Tider spesialutgave, p.27-38.

2015 ‘Crafting Heritage: Artisans and the Making of Indigenous Heritage in Contemporary Taiwan’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21(10):1036-1049.

2014 'Polysemic objects and partial translations: Museums and the Interpretation of Indigenous Material Culture in Taiwan', in Museum Anthropology 37(2): 102-117.

2013 'Controversial indigeneity: museums representing non-officially recognized indigenous groups in Taiwan', Journal of Nordic Museology, 2: 17-32.

2011 ‘Gradients of alterity: museums and the negotiation of cultural difference in contemporary Norway’ in Naguib S. et al. (eds) Patterns of Cultural Valuation. Priorities and Aesthetics in Exhibitions of Identity in Museums, Special Issue ARV Nordic Yearbook of Folklore, 67, p.13-36.

2011 ‘Miniatures of the nation: ethnic minority figurines, mannequins and dioramas in Chinese museums’, Museum and Society, 9(1): 1-16.

2010 ‘Using different pasts in a similar way. Museum representations of national history in Norway and China’ in Peter Aronsson (ed). Culture Unbound. Journal of Current Cultural Research. Thematic section: 'Uses of the Past – Nordic historical cultures in comparative perspective', 2 (40): 745-768. Online: https://cultureunbound.ep.liu.se/article/view/1952 

2010 ‘The politics of imagining and forgetting in Chinese ethnic minorities museums' in Kontopodis M. & Matera V. (eds), Doing Memory, Doing Identity: Politics of the Everyday in Contemporary Global Communities. In Outlines: Critical Practice Studies, special issue. Online http://ojs.statsbiblioteket.dk/index.php/outlines/index

2008 ‘A Chinese puzzle: the representation of Chinese Ethnic Minorities in the Museums of Kunming, Yunnan Province of China’, International Journal of the Inclusive Museum, 1(3): 35-42.

2004 ‘Reconfiguring the Political Role of Museums in Post-Communist China: The Case of Shanghai.’ Asiatiches Studien/Etudes Asiatiques, Vol.58 (4), p.1085-1095. https://www.e-periodica.ch/digbib/view?pid=ast-002:2004:58::1266#1114 

Non-refereed publications

Forthcoming 2026 ‘Human-ice relationalities through the lenses of ecopoetry’ in Höckert E. et al. (Eds). Sustainable Naturecultures and Multispecies Futures, Symposium Proceedings, September 23-25, 2025, Rovaniemi, Finland. Pp.154-159.

2025 Gobbi, Mauro, Varutti Marzia, Daniel Gaudio, ‘Ghiacciai, un patrimonio bioculturale ed emozionale da tutelare’ (in Italian), Le Scienze (Scientific American), August, p.8-9.

2023 Ten Ideas for a Caring Museum. Online Toolkit for Museum Professionals. The International Museum of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, Geneva. In English: 

https://redcrossmuseum.ch/en/ressources/toolkit-2-10-ideas-for-a-caring…

in French https://www.redcrossmuseum.ch/explore/medialibrary/toolkit-2-10-ideas-for-a-caring-museum/ 

2022 [Exhibition Review] ‘Tout Contre la Terre’, Museum of Natural History, Geneva, Switzerland. Museum and Society, vol.20 (2): 328-331. https://journals.le.ac.uk/ojs1/index.php/mas/article/view/4097/3550

2022 ‘The Emotional Turn in Museum Practice’, ICOM Voices, 14 September. Online: https://icom.museum/en/news/the-emotional-turn-in-museum-practice/ 

2022 ‘Ripensare la Restituzione: dalla proprietà alla relazione.’ Roots & Routes. Research on Visual Cultures. Vol, 39, May-August. Online: https://www.roots-routes.org/ripensare-la-restituzione-dalla-proprieta-alla-relazione-di-marzia-varutti/ 

2018 [Book Review] Museums in a Time of Migration. Rethinking museums’ roles, representations, collections, and collaborations. Johansson, Christina & Bevelander Pieter (eds). Nordisk Museologi n.2.

2018 “Musings on Museology” in Nordisk Museologi n.1, p.147-149.

2017 “What does it may mean for a museum to be ‘socially engaged’?”, Nasjonalt museumsnettverk for demokrati og menneskerettigheter, Vinterseminaret, Eidsvoll, 13 February. Online: https://eidsvoll1814.no/marzia-varutti 

2016 ‘Entre silence et activisme : le rôle des musées taiwanais dans la reconnaissance indigène’, in Chevallier D. et Fanlo A. (eds) Exposer, s'exposer : de quoi le musée est-il le contemporain?, Museum of the Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean (MuCEM) Online: http://www.mucem.org/sites/default/files/2017-06/exposer_s-exposer.pdf 

2014 [Book Review] European Museums in the 21st century, vol.1,2,3, Basso Peressut et al. Eds, Journal of Nordic Museology 1:122-128.

2013 [Exhibition Review] 'Villa Sovietica. Soviet Objects: Import-Export', Journal of Museum Ethnography 26:150-175.https://www.jstor.org/stable/43915844 

2012 [Book Review] The lives of Chinese objects: Buddhism, Imperialism and display, by Louise Tythacott, JRAI 18(4):889-890 https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2012.01798_4.x 

2011 Taiwanese memory revisited, ICOM NEWS Magazine 64(3). https://icom.museum/en/ressource/taiwanese-memory-revisited-yaiwanese-museums-are-developing-new-narratives-of-the-islands-past/ 

2008 ‘Thinking through the 'Other': comparing representations of cultural alterity at the British Museum and the Shanghai Museum’, in Aronsson, P. and Nyblom, A. (eds.) Comparing: National Museums, Territories, Nation-Building and Change. NaMu IV, Linköping University Electronic Press. Online: https://ep.liu.se/en/conference-article.aspx?series=ecp&issue=30&Articl…

2008 ‘Representing and 'consuming' the Chinese Other at the British Museum”, in A. Bugge Amundsen and A. Nyblom (eds.) National Museums in a Global World. NaMu III, Linköping University Electronic Press. Online: https://ep.liu.se/konferensartikel.aspx?series=ecp&issue=31&Article_No=6 

2008 The Mary Lumsden Collection. A set of ethnic costumes from Yunnan, China, research report, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge (UK).

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