Nina Finigan

About Nina

In Nina’s role as Curator Manuscripts she is responsible for helping to care for, develop and research Tāmaki Paenga Hira’s manuscript, ephemera and oral history collections. This collection is extensive – the manuscript collection alone consists of an estimated 3 million documents. These collections are nationally significant and reflect the diversity of the Museum’s wider collections, spanning social history, Māori and Pasifika taonga, war and conflict, and natural sciences.

Research Interests and Projects

My interests are grounded in museology – the melding of theory and practice within the museum context. In my acquisition work, I am interested in the complexities of selection and identifying historical ‘silences’ and biases within collections. 

Representation, gender and power are the threads that weave through my work. These concerns surface in different ways in the projects that I undertake - from exploring emotion as a means to examine and critique power in the archive, to collecting recipes as a way to centre the experiences of women and stories of the domestic space. Always in the mix is the museum - as a construct, an idea and an emblem of power.