Kate Hennessy

Kate Hennessy is a cultural anthropologist with a PhD in Anthropology from the University of British Columbia and an MA in the Anthropology of Media from the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies. As the director of the Making Culture Lab at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT), Dr. Hennessy researches the role of digital technology in the documentation and safeguarding of cultural heritage, and in the mediation of culture, history, objects, and subjects in new forms. She uses participatory methodologies to collaboratively produce virtual museum exhibits and ethnographic media with Aboriginal organizations and cultural institutions. She is interested in the role of new technologies in facilitating access to museum collections, and in related questions of ownership, repatriation, and image ethics in the digital age.

Recent projects include Inuvialuit Living History, produced in collaboration with the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre and the Smithsonian Institution’s Arctic Studies Center, and Dane Wajich—Dane-zaa Stories and Songs: Dreamers and the Land, produced in collaboration with the Doig River First Nation. She designed the Visual Anthropology Review’s first multimedia volume in 2003 as assistant editor of the journal, and she is a co‐founder of the Ethnographic Terminalia Curatorial Collective, which curates exhibitions at the intersection of ethnography and contemporary art each year in parallel with the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association.

Dr. Hennessy was a Trudeau Scholar from 2006–2010, a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Graduate Scholar from 2005–2009, a Canadian Polar Commission Scholar in 2006–2007, and a Commonwealth Scholar from 2001–2002. She is on the Board of Directors of the Museum of Vancouver and on the Steering Committee of the Bill Reid Centre for Northwest Coast Art Studies.

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