Dr. Robin Boast is the Deputy Director of the Museum and the Curator for World Archaeology. He coordinates the MPhil Graduate Course on Museums: History, Theory and Practice in the Department of Archaeology and is the Lecturer for the History of Science in Archaeology.

He lectures on the history and sociology of scientific practice in the Department of Geography and is a Senior Research Associate in the Faculty of History and Philosophy of Science. He was the Director of the innovative Virtual Teaching Collection Project in the 1990s, and more recently a Visiting Professor at the European University Institute in Florence Italy, Director of the Local Knowledge and Diversity Research Group for Web 2.0 local knowledge systems, a member of the Museum Documentation Association Standards Committee, and a member of the Museum, Libraries and Archives Council (DCMS) Web Advisory Group. He has 38 years of experience in computer (and later on-line) access to museums and has been an expert advisor to the EU, British Government and numerous museums and heritage organizations.

Research:
Dr. Boast's research centres on the disciplinary gap between knowledge practices and technologies (including but not limited to ICT), anthropology, history and philosophy of knowledge and sociology of technology. I am primarily interested in those institutions and their technologies which maintain and collect knowledge, or at least claim to. I'm interested in the ongoing and changing traditions of managing, sharing, transforming and communicating knowledges. This is why his research has to bridge so many disciplines, it's not by choice, but traditional knowledge practices, which includes the contemporary sciences and technologies, are practices that have deep historical traditions and a dynamic contemporary life.

Dr. Boast's work is not simply about exploring and writing about these histories and practices, but is deeply 'immersive', though I always just thought of it as getting mucked in and having fun. I believe profoundly that it is important to make things and be a part of the practices and constructions that constitute and enable knowledge. So I also build systems, all open source, that organize and enact knowledge sharing. His most recent work has been with museums and heritage organizations in Zuni, New Mexico (USA) and Nunavut (Canada). Between these sites and the Museum in Cambridge we are exploring what could be called Web 2.0 systems that facilitate and sustain the collecting and sharing of knowledges within the local communities, of which the Museum in Cambridge is one, and the enabling of the performances and dialogues that are necessary for the sharing of these knowledges between institutions and communities.

Research Projects:
Kechiba:wa: Reconceptualizing Digital Objects around Cultural Articulations
CollectionsSpace Open Source Collections Management System
ECLAP: European Collected Library of Artistic Performance
Arctic Collections: On-line narratives

On-line Projects:
Blobjects
1934 Wordie Arctic Expedition
MAA-Resource
MAA-Collections
Web Hooks

Publications:
Boast, Robin and Peter Biehl (in press) Web 2 and the Sociology of Archaeological Knowledge. In Sarah Whitcher Kansa, Eric C. Kansa and Ethan Watrall (eds.), Web 2.0 and Beyond: New Tools for Archaeological Collaboration and Communication. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press.
Srinivasan, Ramesh, Robin Boast, J. Furner and Katherine Becvar (in press) Digital museums and diverse cultural knowledges: Moving past the traditional catalog. The Information Society 25(4):.
Srinivasan, Ramesh, Robin Boast, Katherine Becvar and Jim Enote (in press) Diverse Knowledges and Contact Zones within the Digital Museum. Science, Technology, & Human Values 34(5): .
Srinivasan, Ramesh, Jim Enote, Katherine M. Becvar, and Robin Boast (2009) Critical and Reflective Uses of New Media Technologies in Tribal Museums. Museum Management and Curatorship, 24(2): 169-189.
Srinivasan, R., R. Boast, K. M. Becvar and J. Furner (2009) Blobgects: Digital Museum Catalogs and Diverse User Communities. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST) 60(4): 666-678.
Boast, R. (2009) The Formative Century, 1860-1960. In B. Cunliff and C. Gosden (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 47-70.
Boast, R., M. Bravo and R. Srinivasan (2007) Return to Babel: Emergent diversity, digital resources, and local knowledge. The Information Society 23(5).
Boast, R. (2002) Mortimer Wheeler's science of order. Antiquity 76(291): 165-170.
Boast, R. (2002) Computing Futures: A Vision of the Past. In B. Cunliffe, W. Davies and C. Renfrew (eds.), Archaeology: The Widening Debate. London, British Academy, pp. 567-592.
Boast, R. (2002) Pots as Categories: British Beakers. In A. Woodward and J.D. Hill (eds.) Prehistoric Britain: The Ceramic Basis. Oxbow Books, Oxford, pp. 96-105.
Boast, R, S. Guha and A. Herle (2001) Collecting Sights: the Photographic Collections of the Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, 1850-1970. Cambridge: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge University Press.
Boast, R. (2000) Speculum, Exemplar, Imago. In A. Lowe & S. Schaffer (eds.), N01SE: Universal Language, Pattern Recognition, Data Synaesthetics. Cambridge, Kettle's Yard.
Boast, R. (1998) Patterns By Design: Changing Perspectives of Beaker Variation. M. Edmunds and C. Richards (eds.), Understanding the Neolithic of Northwestern Europe, Glasgow, Cruithne Press, pp.385-406.
Boast, R. (1997) A small company of actors: a critique of style. Journal of Material Culture 2(2):173-198.
Boast, R. (1997) Virtual Collections. In G. Denford (ed.), Representing Archaeology in Museums, Museum Archaeologist 22:94-100.
Boast, R. and S. Lucy (1996) Teaching With Objects. In H. Kammermans (ed.), Interfacing the Past: Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, CAA95, Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia 28(2): 479-481.
Boast, R. (1995) The Virtual Teaching Collection: Multimedia access to museum collections. Proceedings of Information: the Hidden Resource, The Seventh International Conference of the Museum Documentation Association, Edinburgh. Cambridge, Museum Documentation Association, pp. 323-334.
Boast, R. (1995) Fine Pots, Pure Pots, Beaker Pots. In I. Kinnes and G. Varndell (eds). 'Unbaked Urns of Rudely Shape' Essays on British and Irish Pottery for Ian Longworth, Oxford, Oxbow Monograph 55, pp.69-80.