Museum curator and researcher specialising in collecting histories and provenance research.
About me
I am a curator and researcher with an interest in museums, histories of collecting, and provenance research. I am currently Provenance Research Curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where I am responsible for leading on and coordinating research into ownership histories including colonial and Nazi-era provenance.
In 2024 I completed my PhD under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership scheme with the University of St Andrews and National Museums Scotland. My thesis focused on objects from Ethiopia in the UK, exploring the biographies of these objects and their journeys into museum collections.
My doctoral research followed on from four years previously working at the V&A, where I held various roles including Assistant Curator of Metalwork and Director’s Researcher. My most significant project at the V&A was Maqdala 1868, a display of the museum’s Ethiopian collections including looted objects that have been the subject of restitution claims for many years. I have also recently worked as a Project Curator on the British Museum’s Recovery Programme, assisting with the museum’s investigation into thefts from its Greek and Roman collections.
Before joining the museum world I spent seven years working as a software engineer, and I continue to make occasional use of my coding skills in my research.
Dr Alex Watson Jones 