Senior Lecturer in Cultural Anthropology and Museum Studies
Director, May Weber Ethnographic Study Collection

Department of Anthropology
Loyola University Chicago
Lake Shore Campus, BVM Tower 706
1032 W. Sheridan Road
Chicago, IL   60660
Office Phone: 773.508.3469
May Weber Collection Phone: 773.508.3887

Catherine Nichols holds a Ph.D. in Socio-Cultural Anthropology (2014) from Arizona State University. Working across cultural and museum anthropology, material culture and museum studies, and the history of science and anthropology, she examines the exchange of anthropological objects by museums in the late nineteenth century, particularly by the Smithsonian Institution and Field Museum. She has curated exhibitions using anthropological and fine art collections, and at Loyola University Chicago she directs the May Weber Ethnographic Study Collection.

Selected Publications

Books/Special Issues

Nichols, C. 2021. Exchanging Objects: Nineteenth-Century Museum Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution. New York: Berghahn Books. [‘Museum and Collections’ series.]

Nichols, C. and C. Lowman (Eds). 2018. Introduction to the Special Issue: Recognizing the Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology. Museum Anthropology 41(1): 5-12.

Journal Articles & Book Chapters

Nichols, C. 2022. Curating Duplicates: operationalizing similarity in the Smithsonian Institution with Haida rattles, 1880-1926. The British Journal for the History of Science, 55(3): 341-363. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087422000164

Nichols, C. 2021. “Illustrating Anthropological Knowledge: Texts, Images & Duplicate Specimens at the Smithsonian Institution and the Pitt Rivers Museum,” in Mobile Museums: Collections in Circulation, edited by Felix Driver, Mark Nesbitt, and Caroline Cornish, 121-148. London: UCL Press.

X. Sun and C. Nichols. 2020. “East Asian Textiles: The Application of Digital Technologies in Preserving and Exhibiting Textiles Overseas,” in Proceedings of DH2020: Benevolence and Excellence: Digital Humanities and Chinese Culture, Shanghai, 2020, 196-204. Beijing: China Academic Journals (CD Edition) Electronic Publishing House Co., Ltd.

Nichols, C. 2019. Teaching and Learning Anthropology in the Museum: Developing an Exhibit with the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm. Teaching & Learning Anthropology Journal 2(1):1-23.

Nichols, C. 2019. From Pots to Pan Pipes: Specimen Exchanges between the Field Museum’s Paul S. Martin and Harold Gladwin of Gila Pueblo Archaeological Foundation. Museum & Society 17(1): 98-116.

Parezo, N.J. and C. Nichols. 2018. Is it Anthropology? Exhibiting Latin American Cultures at the 1892 Madrid International Expositions. In Tracking Anthropological Engagements: Histories of Anthropology Annual, Volume 12, edited by Regna Darnell and Frederic W. Gleach, 133-174. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Nichols, C. 2018. The Smithsonian Institution’s “Greatest Treasures”: Valuing Museum Objects Within Practices of Specimen Exchange. Museum Anthropology 41(1): 13-29.

Nichols, C. and Parezo, N. J. 2017. Social and Material Connections: Otis T. Mason’s European Grand Tour and Collections Exchanges. History and Anthropology 28(1): 58-83.

Nichols, C. 2016. Exchanging Anthropological Duplicates at the Smithsonian Institution. Museum Anthropology 39 (2): 130-146.

Nichols, C. 2015. Shared Values, Gifted Objects: The Smithsonian Institution’s Anthropological Duplicates. Collaborative Anthropologies 7(2): 32-71.

Nichols, C. 2014. A Century of Circulation: The Return of the Smithsonian Institution’s Duplicate Anthropological Specimens. Museum Anthropology 37(2): 144-159.

Nichols, C. 2014. Lost in Museums: Ethical Dimensions of Historical Practices of Anthropological Specimen Exchange. Curator: The Museum Journal 57(2): 225-235.

Isaac, G., A. Bojorquez and C. Nichols. 2012. Dying to be Represented: Dia de Los Muertos in Museums. Collaborative Anthropologies 5: 28-63.