Reflections & Related Work
Academic Publications
In the Media
Golay Memorial Lecture, Cornell University, November 2025: ‘Restitution in the Making of Southeast Asia Today’
“The final meeting in Cambodia reiterated the inaccessibility of sites that are so often the starting point for ‘doing restitution’ work. Skidding through the wet terrain of the Kulen forests and cashew plantations, our motorbike drivers demonstrated the importance of local knowledge (and skillful driving!) in a moment of unexpected embodied learning. Just one of many significant moments on a COOP trip, where the aim of ‘surfacing networks’ left a lasting impression.”
I am currently developing my blog on CO-OP — what’s restitution actually for — into an article, which will be published in the International Journal of Cultural Property special issue: Cultural Property in Southeast Asia: International Law, Sovereignty, and the Politics of Heritage, co-edited by Dr. Anaïs Mattez dan Prof. Maitrii Aung Twiin.
I also presented that paper in the conference ‘Knowledge Dependencies and the Un/Making of Equitable Futures,’ co-organised by Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies and German Institute of Development and Sustainability.
Insights from CO-OP have informed my work in the NIAS-NIOD-KITLV Fellowship: Moving object, mobilising culture in the context of (de)colonisation, where I consider the entanglement of my positionality as Indonesian scholar researching colonial collections in the Netherlands and how colonial objects are being mobilised (but also abused) as part of the decolonisation impulse here in Dutch museums.
Academic Publications
“In a light-hearted moment, the wafting of heavy metal music from a music hall outside the confines of the ancient temple premises introduced an interesting element, specifically the part played by aural aspects in the meaning of a site. The ancient 15th century site, preserved and presented with methods that recalled colonial heritage, was permeated by the insistent thrums of modern music.”
Gems
“More-than-human: the archaeologist at Sambor Prei Kuk reflecting on bomb craters there, and on ecological ethics when trees and temples embrace each other. Dis/relocation: Ashley speaking with villagers nearby the plundered site of Koh Ker. Unsettling charm: the chanting monks at an otherwise deserted Muang Fah Daed, who as guardian-owners welcomed us, unexpectedly, in various languages they thought we spoke, with sound enlarging microphones. Historical sensation: a stone sculpture near Borobudur informing us on the art of replicas and on family histories, connecting him, and his stones, to colonial temple restorations. Cared for cats sleeping in shops. Just a few examples of the unsettling, humbling learning experiences CO-OP provided.
Meeting people, watching (circumambulating) objects in Southeast Asia, together, with care, listening to each other, you see these objects reflecting many arts and many difficult pasts, violence, losses and potencies.
Speaking of objects, CO-OP remains a gem to me, and it is the humans and more-than-human companions of our learning journey that made it a gem. “
Academic Publications
Monographs
Murphy, Stephen A. 2024. Buddhist Landscapes: Art and Archaeology of the Khorat Plateau, 7th to
11th Centuries. SAAAP-NUS Series Art and Archaeology of Southeast Asia: Hindu-Buddhist Traditions.
https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg/products/buddhist-landscapes
Articles
Murphy, Stephen A.
(2025), ‘Curating the Return: What happens after restitution, a case study from Thailand,’ Museum & Society, pp. 35-53 DOI: https://doi.org/10.29311/mas.v23i2.4412
Murphy, Stephen A.
(2024) ‘Restitution and repatriation as an opportunity, not a loss: some reflections on recent Southeast Asian cases’, Antiquity, 98(401), pp. 1395–1405. doi:10.15184/aqy.2024.129.
Hanwong, Tanongsak, Lalita Hanwong and Stephen A. Murphy (2024) ‘The Prakhon Chai Hoard Debunked: Unravelling Six Decades of Myth, Misdirection, and Misidentification.’ International
Journal of Cultural Property, Volume 31(2), pp. 177 – 201. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0940739124000262
TV Documentaries
Untold Histories. Episode 239, 15 August 2024: Phu Phra Bat World Heritage, following the
footsteps of the Isan Sima culture, Part I.
ประวัติศาสตร์ นอกตํารา/มรดกโลกภูพระบาทตามรอยวัฒนธรรมสีมาอีสาน
I ประวัติศาสตร์นอกตำรา
Newspaper articles
‘Why auction of Buddha relics was called off and why it matters– an expert in Asian
art explains’ The Conversation, 30 May 2025. Why auction of Buddha relics was called off and why it matters – an expert in Asian art explains
Quoted in the media
Rebecca Root ‘Southeast Asia steps up efforts to retrieve cultural artefacts’ International Bar Association 13
March 2025; https://www.ibanet.org/Southeast-Asia-steps-up-efforts-to-retrieve-cultural-artefacts
Chloe Veltman ‘A museum’s confession: Why we have looted objects’, NPR. January 28, 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/01/28/nx-s1-5260960/thailand-art-heist-repatriation-san-francisco-museum–