Miriam Caroline Hamburger

• Curator, Room of Remembrance in the '[Re]Inventing GRASSI', GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig, 08/01/21 - present
• Curator, REPATRIATION in exhibition 'PROLOG', GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig, 09/01/20 - 09/01/21

• 2023, Recipient of the University of California, Santa Barbara Rowny Fellowship
• 2017, Kneeland Prize for outstanding academic achievement

• Prison Pedagogy Fellow at The University of California, Santa Barbara. April 2025-present.

Completed training to teach humanities skills to incarcerated students in California Prisons. 

• Teaching Assistant, The University of California, Santa Barbara. October 2024-June 2025.

Responsible for class planning (three 50 minute classes), grading, short assignments, mini-lectures, and undergraduate advising. Courses assisted: Native American Religious Traditions (RS14); History of Western Civilization: Modernity III (RS80c); Islam and Modernity (RS6)

• Student Assistant at the Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe (KFG) "Multiple Secularities Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities" at Leipzig University. April 22-July 2023.

Assistant to administrative coordination of international research fellows. Translation and copyediting between German and English. 

• Research Assistant in the dept. Human Remains and Repatriation, GRASSI Museum for Ethnology (Leipzig, Germany) Jan 2019—Dec. 2021

Research, translation, inventory, and oversight of restitution and repatriation of artifacts and human remains. Participant in 2-week research trip to Australia in support of continued collaboration with Indigenous groups. 

• Museum Depot Assistant at the GRASSI Museum for Ethnology (Leipzig, Germany) June 2018 – December 2018

Responsible for the conservation and research for over 300 objects in regions ranging from Mexico, North Asia (Siberia), and Polynesia.

• "Olympic Games of Repatriation: A Case Study of Aboriginal Ancestral Repatriation", Master’s thesis, University of Leipzig, pending, 2025
• Review, First Knowledges Collection Box Set Series: Edited by Margo Neale, 2020–2023, Thames & Hudson Australia, 9781760761189, 9781760761400, 9781760761554, 9781760762162, 9781760761875, 9781760762827, Material Religion, 21, 1, 112–13, 10.1080/17432200.2025.2456405
• "Not a Thing among Things: Curating Repatriation", blogpost, 10/05/23, https://religiousmatters.nl/not-a-thing-among-things-curating-repatriation-blog-by-miriam-c-hamburger/
• Review Metamodernism: The Future of Theory, Jason Josephson Ānanda Storm, Zeitschrift für Junge Religionswissenschaft, 18, 2023
• "The rehumanization of human remains in ethnographic collections: from cultural heritage to personal lineage.", ICME News, 94th, 2022, 53-57
• "Presença Karajá and the Fritz Krause collection: a critical understanding of 'immaterial restitution' and the opportunities presented from collaborative 'digital dissemination'", Ritxoko is Gold!, The Anthropological Museum of the Federal University of Goiás, Brazil (UFG), 1–47, October 2022
• "Transforming Collecting Policies in Museums: The Need for Leadership and Societal Responsibility.", ICME News, 93rd, February 2022, 19-24
• "Objekte, die mehr erzählen, als man sieht: Restitution als Anfang, nicht als Ende der gemeinsamen Geschichte", KIRCHE Weltweit, Mitteilungsblatt des Leipziger Missionwerkes, 2, June 2021, 4-7
• "Restitution, Repatriierung, Decolonisierung, GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig", March 3, December 2021-2022, grassi-voelkerkunde.skd.museum/forschung/dekolonisierung-restitution-und-repatriierung/, 10/16/22

• 05/01/24, Panelist in the American Indian and Indigenous Conference: 'Embodying Wounds, Embodying Healing: Theaters of Memory in Public Repatriation Ceremony', Santa Barbara
• 03/01/23, Panelist in the American Academy of Religion, Western Region on the topic: 'Not Activism, Repatriation as Spirituality', Las Vegas
• 12/01/22, Lecturer in series 'Junge Religionswissenschaft im Gespräch' on 'Gebeine in sächsische Sammlungen', Leipzig, Germany
• 10/01/21, Panelist in the ICME, INTERCOM & ICOM Joint Conference 'Transforming museum collecting: the need for leadership, societal responsibility and visionary policies', presenting on Ritual and Repatriation, Baku, Azerbaijan
• 06/01/21, Panelist in the Bayerische Museumsakademie Spring academy on the theme of provenance research, 'Provenienzforschung ausstellen: Geschichten von Restitution und Repatriierung', Digital
• 2020, Lecturer at the University of Leipzig, History Department on 'Provenance Research: Decolonizing the Collection', Digital
• 2020, Lecturer in the educational event 'Crown Jewel' and 'Down Under' – India and Australia in the GRASSI Museum of Leipzig on the topic of provenance research concerning human remains, Leipzig
• 2017, Lecturer and Panelist at the Western Commission for the Study of Religion Conference on the subject of Native American art and discrimination in the art world, Los Angeles