I somehow haven’t been to a @petriefriends lecture so far in lockdown, but I’m really looking forward to this talk from @poisonchallis on Petrie’s ideas on race and eugenics.

Big UCL undergrad flashbacks to the Typecast exhibition, that was really good.

Fascinating to hear that poor people in the UK who died in workhouses in the 19th and early 20th Century often had their bodies taken to be dissected by anatomy students. My great-great-grandfather Charles Ford died in the Lambeth workhouse – I wonder if that happened to him

In Egyptology there’s been a tendency to make light of Petrie’s eccentricities like subsisting on tinned food and working in his pink long johns, but the more I’ve learned about Petrie over the years, the more I just think he was a crank.

Which is not to say that his contributions to archaeology aren’t valuable, but hey, this is why we’re doing critical analysis of the history of Egyptology

Always happy to see the institution that is Tracey Golding.

I don’t think anyone is trying to (ugh) “cancel” Petrie. Looking at his legacy and beliefs critically and potentially re-naming the museum is not “cancelling” him.

Just by the by, one of the best events I went to while I was at UCL, which I think was linked to the Typecast exhibition, was an African hair night, with a hairdresser in talking about African hair care and styles. As an extremely white person, I found that really valuable.