DURHAM, N.H. (AP) - A University of New Hampshire associate professor of anthropology has been awarded a fellowship to establish a public history museum in Belize.
Eleanor Harrison-Buck will use the $50,000 Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship to create the museum focusing on the Kriol community. More than a third of the Belize population is part of the Kriol community, which is descended from enslaved Africans brought to the country by Europeans in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Harrison-Buck, who has conducted research in Belize for more than 25 years, helped establish a temporary exhibit on Kriol culture last summer. But she says school curricula, museum exhibits and the tourism market tend to focus on the ancient Maya and colonial periods rather than Kriol culture.
Harrison-Buck was one of eight scholars to receive the fellowship.
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