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Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

Joshua A. Bell

Curator of Globalization
Department / Division
Anthropology
Education
  • D.Phil., Oxford University
  • B.A., Brown University
  • M.Phil., Oxford University
Research Interests

As a cultural anthropologist I combine ethnographic fieldwork with research in museums and archive to examine the shifting local and global network of relationships between persons, artefacts and the environment. I am interested in materiality, the politics of representation, transforming political economies and ecologies, as well as issues around the production and understanding of history. To date my interests have involved me in fieldwork since 2000 with communities in the Purari Delta of Papua New Guinea documenting the social, economic and environmental transformations in the wake of regional resource extraction. Since 2011, I have been doing a collaborative project on the extraordinary intimate and global relations materialized in cell phones in Washington, D.C. and beyond.

This work is complemented with on-going archival and museum-based research in Australia, Europe, Papua New Guinea, and the United States. At NMNH, I am carrying out research on our Oceanic collections with a particular emphasis on our Melanesian materials (New Caledonia, New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanatau) as well as the 8,000 million feet of film that compose the Human Studies Film Archive in the National Anthropological Archive (NAA). I am the steward for the Oceanic collections and the NAA's cultural holdings, as well as the acting steward for the African and South American collections. Currently I am serving as the chair of NMNH's Anthropology Department.

I am a founding member of the Recovering Voices Program, which connects communities to Smithsonian collections in the effort to support language and knowledge documentation, sustainability and revitalization. As part of Recovering Voices, I co-direct the annual Mother Tongue Film Festival which celebrates language and cultural diversity through showcasing films and filmmakers from around the world. I also am the Director for the Summer Institute of Museum Anthropology (SIMA), a summer course funded by the National Science Foundation which teaches graduate students how to effectively engage with museum collections.

I also work with interns and fellows, help supervise PhD theses, and teach at George Washington University.



Publications
Book
  • Halvaksz,Jamon A., II and Bell, Joshua A., editors. 2024. Naturalist Histories: Making Nature, Knowledge, and People in Oceania. Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press.
  • Bell, Joshua A. and Kuipers, Joel C., editors. 2018. Linguistic and material intimacies of cell phones. New York: Routledge.
  • Bell, Joshua A. and Hasinof, Erin, editors. 2015. The Anthropology of Expeditions: Travel, Visualities, Afterlives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Bell, Joshua A., West, Paige, and Filer, Colin, editors. 2015. Tropical Forests Of Oceania Anthropological Perspectives. Canberra: ANU Press. https://doi.org/10.22459/TFO.08.2015.
  • Bell, Joshua A., Christen, Kim, and Turin, Mark, editors. 2013. After the Return: Digital Repatriation and the Circulation of Indigenous Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Bloomington Libraries. In Museum Anthropology Review.
  • Bell, Joshua A., Brown, Alison, and Gordon, Robert , editors. 2013. Recreating First Contact: Expeditions, Anthropology and Popular Culture. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press.
Book Chapter
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2024. "It was only natural: Asymmetrical Labor and Narratives of Nature of the 1928 USDA Sugarcane Expedition." In Naturalist Histories: Making Nature, Knowledge and People in Oceania. Halvaksz,Jamon A., II and Bell, Joshua A., editors. 101–124. Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2024. "Unseen Connections: Exhibiting the Global Stories of Cellular telephony the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History." In Museums and Digital Histories: Objects, Narratives and Practice. Natale, Simone, Foti, Petrina, and Parry, Ross, editors. 13–34. London, England: Routledge.
  • Bell, Joshua A. and Halvaksz,Jamon A., II. 2024. "Introduction: Circulation, Dispossesion, Knowledge and the Practices of Science." In Naturalist Histories: Making Nature, Knowledge and People in Oceania. Halvaksz,Jamon A., II and Bell, Joshua A., editors. 1–30. Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2023. "Emmissary of Culture and Knowledge." In Smithsonian Asian Pacific American History, Art, and Culture in 101 Objects. Gonzaleves, Theodore S., editor. 14–15. Washington DC: Smithsonian Books.
  • Marsh, Diana, Moriarty, Peyton, Myers, Elena, and Bell, Joshua A. 2023. "Media Technologies and Salvage Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution: An Exploration of Archival Documents and Museum Power Relations." In U.S. Museum Histories and the Politics of Interpretation: Never Neutral. Schiavo, Laura, editor. 81–103. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003263616.
  • Urwin, Chris, David, Bruno, Delannoy, Jean-Jacques, Bell, Joshua A., and Geneste, Jean-Michael. 2022. "Aboriginal monumental stone working in Northern Australia during the Pleistocene." In Megaliths of the World. Laporte, Luc, Large, Jean-Marc, Nespoulous, Laurent, Scarre, Chris, and Steimer-Herbet, Tara, editors. 241–256. Oxford: Achaeopress Publishing Limited. 1
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2021. "Circuits of accumulation and loss: intersecting natural histories of the 1928 USDA New Guinea Sugarcane Expedition's collections." In Mobile Museums: Collections in Circulation. Driver, Felix, Nesbitt, Mark, and Cornish, Caroline, editors. 71–95. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv18kc0px.10.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2020. "The Beginnings and Ends of Basketry in the Purari Delta." In Basketry and Beyond: Constructing Cultures. Heslop, Sandy and Anderson, Helen, editors. 132–140. Norwich: Sainsbury Center for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2019. ""Check out that gold plated board!": The Performance, Poetics and Dirty Realities of Scrapping Cellphones and Electronics in North America.'." In The Anthropology of Precious Minerals. Ferry, Elizabeth, Vallard, Annabel, and Walsh, Andrew, editors. 43–68. Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press.
  • Kuipers, Joel and Bell, Joshua A. 2018. "Introduction: Linguistic and Material Intimacies of Cell Phone Communication." In Linguistic and Material Intimacies of Cell Phones.. Bell, Joshua and Kuipers, Joel, editors. 1–30. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315388380-1.
  • Kuipers, Joel, Bell, Joshua A., Hazen, Jacqueline, Kemble, Amanda, and Kobak, Briel. 2018. "Intimate Materialities in Cell Phone Repair: Performance, Anxiety and Trust in DC Repair Shops." In Linguistic and material intimacies of cell phones. Bell, Joshua A. and Kuipers, Joel C., editors. 235–263. New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315388380-11.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2017. "1 Lot Magic Sticks 6 Bundles: Mimetic Technologies, Their Intimacies and Intersecting Histories." In Mimesis and Pacific transcultural encounters: making likenesses in time, trade, and ritual reconfigurations. Mageo, Jeannette Marie and Hermann, Elfriede, editors. 257–273. New York: Berghahn Books. In ASAO studies in Pacific anthropology.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2016. ""Everything Will Come Up Like TV, Everything Will Be Revealed: Death in a Age of Uncertainty in the Purari Delta of Papua New Guinea." In Lipset, D. and Silverman, E. eds. Mortuary Dialogues Death Ritual and the Reproduction of Moral Community in Pacific M." In Mortuary Dialogues Death Ritual and the Reproduction of Moral Community in Pacific Modernities. Lipset, David and Silverman, Eric, editors. 208–233. New York: Berghahn. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvpj7hc4.16.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2015. ""Bird Specimen, Papua New Guinea."." In Trophies, Relics and Curios? : Missionary Heritage from Africa and the Pacific. Jacobs, Karen, Knowles, Chantal, and Wingfield, Chris, editors. 57–62. Leiden: Sidestone Press.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2015. "The Structural Violence of Resource Extraction in the Purari Delta." In Tropical Forests Of Oceania: Anthropological Perspectives. 127–153. Canberra: ANU Press. https://doi.org/10.22459/TFO.08.2015.06.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2015. ""You cannot divide a tomahawk as you can a stick of tobacco": Currencies of Conversion and History in and from the Papuan Gulf of Papua New Guinea." In Art, Artifact, Commodity: Perspectives on the P.G.T. Black Collection.. Foster, Robert J. and Leacock, Kathryn H., editors. 25–34. Buffalo: Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences.
  • Bell, Joshua A. and Hasinof, Erin. 2015. "“The Sticky After-Lives of “Sweet” Things: Performances and Silences of the 1928 USDA Sugarcane Expedition Collections.”." In The Anthropology of Expeditions: Travel, Visualities, Afterlives.. Bell, Joshua A. and Hasinof, Erin, editors. 207–241. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Bell, Joshua A., West, Paige, and Filer, Colin. 2015. "Introduction." In Tropical Forests Of Oceania: Anthropological Perspectives. 1–21. Canberra: ANU Press. https://doi.org/10.22459/TFO.08.2015.01.
  • Hasinoff, Erin and Bell, Joshua A. 2015. "Introduction. The Anthropology of Expeditions." In Anthropology of Expeditions: Travel, Visualities, Afterlives.. Bell, Joshua A. and Hasinof, Erin, editors. 1–32. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Kemble, Amanda, Kobak, Briel, Bell, Joshua A., and Kuipers, Joel. 2015. ""How to Be a Cell Phone Repair Technician."." In A World of Work: Imagined Manuals for Real Jobs. Gershorn, Ilana, editor. 179–193. Ithaca: University of Cornell Press. https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801456428-014.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2014. "Fishhook." In Tools: Extending our Reach. McCarty, Cara and McQuaid, Matilda, editors. 49–49. New York: Cooper Hewitt.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2014. "Fishhook." In Tools: Extending our Reach. McCarty, Cara and McQuaid, Matilda, editors. 50–51. New York: Cooper Hewitt.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2014. "Fish Trap." In Tools: Extending our Reach. McCarty, Cara and McQuaid, Matilda, editors. 54–55. New York: Cooper Hewitt.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2014. ""The Veracity of Form: Transforming Knowledges and their Forms in the Purari Delta of Papua New Guinea."." In Museum as Process: Translating Local and Global Knowledges. Silverman, Raymond, editor. 105–122. London: Routledge.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2013. "The Sorcery of Sugar: Intersecting Agencies within collections made by the 1928 USDA Sugarcane Expedition to New Guinea." In Reassembling the Collection: Indigenous Agency and Ethnographic Collections. Harrison, R., Clark, A., and Byrne S., editors. 117–142. Santa Fe: School of Advanced Research.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2013. ""Expressions of Kindly Feeling": The London Missionary Society Collections from the Papuan Gulf." In Melanesia: Art and Encounter. Bolton, Lissant, Thomas, Nicholas, Bonshek, Liz, and Adams, Julie, editors. 57–63. London: British Museum Press.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2013. "Dancing A Forest of Relations: Barkcloth Masks of the Central Papuan Gulf of Papua New Guinea." In Made in Oceania: Art and Social Landscapes. Mesenhöller, Peter and Lueb, Oliver, editors. 98–113. Cologne: Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum Kultren Der Welt.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2013. "Mistaken Gods and other Misnomers of First Contact of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 1928 Sugarcane Expedition to New Guinea." In Recreating First Contact: Expeditions, Anthropology and Popular Culture. Bell, Joshua A., Brown, Alison, and Gordon, Robert , editors. 109–128. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press.
  • Gordon, Robert,, Brown, Alison, and Bell, Joshua A. 2013. "Introduction." In Recreating First Contact: Expeditions, Anthropology and Popular Culture. Bell, Joshua A., Brown, Alison, and Gordon, Robert , editors. 1–30. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press.
  • Isaac, Gwyneira and Bell, Joshua A. 2013. "Smithsonian Institution." In Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology: An Encyclopedia. McGee, R. Jon and Warms, Richard L., editors. 781–785. London: Sage Publications, Inc..
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2011. "Transforming basketry traditions in the Purari Delta of Papua New Guinea." In Basketry: Making Human Nature. Heslop, Sandy, editor. 38–43. Norwich: University of East Anglia.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2010. "Ensamblando relaciones: la materialización de la jerarquía y el poder en Oceanía." In Moana: Culturas de las Islas del Pacífico. Mondragón, Carlos, editor. 45–56. México: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2009. "Masque éharo." In Musée du quai Branly. La colletion.. Le Fur, Yves, editor. 232–233. Paris: Skira-Flammarion/Musé du quai Branly.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2009. "Rhombes." In Musée du quai Branly. La colletion.. Le Fur, Yves, editor. 236–237. Paris: Skira-Flammarion/Musé du quai Branly.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2009. "For Scientific Purposes a Stand Camera is Essential: Salvaging Photographic Histories in Papua." In Photography, Anthropology and History: Expanding the Frame. Morton, Chris and Edwards, Elizabeth, editors. 143–170. Surrey: Ashgate.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2006. "The Gulf of Papua." In Shadows of New Guinea: Art of the Great Island of Oceania from the Barbier-Mueller Collections. Peltier, P. and Morin, F., editors. 194–217. Paris: Somogy Editions d'Art.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2003. "Looking to See: Reflections on Visual Repatriation in the Purari Delta, Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea." In Museums and Source Communities: A Routledge Reader. Peers, Laura and Brown, Alison, editors. 111–121. London: Routledge Press.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2002. "A New Hale for the Nation: The Center for Hawaiian Studies, Manoa Campus, University of Hawai’i." In Pacific Art: Persistence, Change and Meaning. Herle, Anita, Stanley, N., Stevenson, K., and Welsch, R., editors. 114–125. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2002. "Center for Hawaiian Studies." In The Pacific Islands: An Encyclopedia. Lal, Brij V. and Fortune, Kate, editors. 555–556. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.
Journal Article
Magazine Article
Book Review
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2017. [Book review] "The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, by Anna L.Tsing." Anthropological Quarterly, 90, (1), 277–282. https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2017.0011.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2012. [Book review] "Lines That Connect: Rethinking Pattern and Mind in the Pacific. By Graeme Were." Pacific Affairs: An International Review of Asia and the Pacific, 85, (2), 460–461.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2010. [Book review] "Photography and Australia. By Helen Ennis. London: Reaktion Books, 2007." Pacific Affairs: An International Review of Asia and the Pacific, 83, (3), 62–63.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2008. [Book review] "Clay, Brenda Johnson (2005) Unstable Images: Colonial Discourse on New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, 1875-1935." Journal of Pacific History, 43, (1), 129–130.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2006. [Book review] "Clendinnen, Inga (2005) Dancing with Strangers: Europeans and Australians at First Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press." Pacific Affairs: An International Review of Asia and the Pacific, 79, (2), 357–358.
  • Bell, Joshua A. 2003. [Book review] "Young, Michael W. and Julia Clark (2001) An Anthropologist in Papua: The Photography of F.E. Williams, 1922-39. Hindmarsh and London: Crawford House Publishing in association with the National Archives of Australia." Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 4, (1), 169–171.
Presentation/Lecture
  • Kuipers, Joel, Bell, Joshua A., Dent, Alexander, Kemble, Amanda, and Briel, Kobak. 2015. Fixing Connections: Language, Culture and Cell Phone Use among High School and University Students in Washington, D.C. [presentation]. The David Skomp Distinguished Lecture Series in Anthropology, March 2014. Indiana University, Department of Anthropology, Bloomington.