Seminar with Laura Pozzi on the subject of “Exhibiting Chinese Diaspora in Thailand: Colonial Legacies, Transnational Loyalties and Local Identities in Bangkok’s Yaorawat Chinatown Heritage Centre and in Phuket’s Thaihua Museum”

Abstract

In this presentation, I will investigate how Sino-Thai communities represent the colonial legacies in which their history is rooted in the Yaorawat Chinatown Heritage Centre in Bangkok and the Thaihua Museum in Phuket. I will ask how these institutions represent the ethnic Chinese’s difficult past as ‘the Others ’ in Siam/Thailand, and if they offer alternative representations of the diaspora’ s history compared to the sanctioned ones displayed in national museums in Thailand and China. I argue that museums provide valuable information about how Sino-Thai communities position themselves in relation to the hegemonic historical narratives supported by the elites in Thailand and in the People’s Republic of China, bringing into focus their collective memories, their transnational loyalties, and diverse processes of identity formation.

Laura Pozzi is Assistant Professor of Modern History at the Faculty of History, University of Warsaw. She is interested in the entanglements between global history, colonialism, and memory politics in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and in Southeast Asia. Her research aims to globalize our viewpoint over the multiple histories of China and to problematize the impact of decolonial discourses over museum practices outside the European context. My new research project ‘China’s Multiple Pasts: Museums, Colonial History, and Decoloniality in Southeast Asia’ is supported by the National Science Centre, Poland grant no. 2024/53/B/HS3/01498.