Object Biography of a Series of Radioactive Drill Cores from Shinkolobwe, Democratic Republic of Congo – ‘Museum & Society’ Publishes Article of Livia Cahn

PhD student Livia Cahn has a new article out: “Object Biography of a Series of Radioactive Drill Cores from Shinkolobwe, Democratic Republic of Congo” was published in the December 2024 issue of the renowned international journal Museum & Society (vol. 22, no. 2-3).

The text is an object biography that takes as its starting point a radioactive drill core encountered in a collection of geological samples in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Departing from a double blindness of not having seen the core and not being able to see its radioactivity, significant connections are drawn out between where the core is stored and the colonial context it was extracted from.

The latest release appears in a special issue on Mobilizing Museum Minerals: Critical Approaches to Mineralogical Collections. Livia Cahn’s article is relevant to the topics of mineral prospection, radiation, subsurface extraction, waste disposal and can be found here.