My Laidlaw experience for the last two summers has involved working with the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Last year, I conducted research connecting Scotland’s historic linen industry with systems of enslavement in Virginia and Jamaica. For my Leadership in Action project this past summer, I continued working with the University of St Andrews, this time specifically contributing to the Re-Collecting Empire program. The program is an ongoing project that seeks to reassess and retell narratives behind a myriad of objects with colonial histories in St Andrews’ collections. It also seeks to involve a variety of voices, from academics to students to community members, and explore new, creative methods of display beyond the traditional museum setting.  My research from my first Laidlaw summer developed my passion for the recontextualization of objects and material goods, but this past summer’s work is where I really made change beyond the world of academia. The goals for me this summer were to 1) create a case example for the recontextualization of an object in the Wardlaw Museum, 2) learn new ways of creatively disseminating this information, and 3) develop a toolkit for this kind of work so that others can do the same on their own. All of these goals fit within the Re-Collecting Empire project, but I had the opportunity to execute these goals independently.   Firstly, I focused on the case study. I looked at all the objects of the Wardlaw Museum to determine a candidate for an object that represented colonial entanglements but whose label or description didn’t reflect that reality. I landed on two stone figurines from Myanmar (Burma): a kneeling Buddha and a cross-legged monk. According to the only information in the description, they were donated by a St Andrews alumnus and member of the East India Company around the time of the First Anglo-Burmese War, but no direct reference was made to how these objects were likely spoils of war. I decided to focus on these two pieces not just because of the lack of essential contextual information, but also because British colonization in Burma is an under-researched history in itself, compared to British colonization of India for instance.   After doing some digging and research, I had developed a more accurate picture of these objects, their contexts, and what they represented. I was able to present this information in an academic workshop hosted by St Andrews, where experts and academics pitched their cases for their own chosen objects to be included in the project’s upcoming in-person exhibition. This experience was fantastic as it forced me out of my comfort zone by placing me in the same position as expert anthropologists, historians, and art historians. I was able to develop not just public speaking skills in the development of a concise, well-researched presentation, but also my sense of confidence and leadership ability.   Yet, I still had to do something with this information I had discovered. Herein lies the pursuit of my next goal: learning new ways and forms of creative research dissemination. I was able to do this through Exhibit, an online platform St Andrews had been experimenting. Exhibit allows you to create a virtual exhibit of one or more objects, add in contextual images and information, and share it. Depending on the object, you can view it in 3D and can manipulate the object to see it from every perspective. There was certainly a learning curve with this platform—one of the biggest struggles here was finding IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) images. These were fairly difficult to locate; only some museums—like the Getty or Smithsonian—use them, which made the exhibit even harder to create given that I chose these objects partially because their historical contexts weren’t widely available in literature or visual material. This part of the project was out of my comfort zone, but ultimately gave me a good idea of the challenges in digital humanities and innovative presentation forms. Eventually, I managed to figure it out and create my exhibit, which I plan to publish on the website to complement the work of the in-person exhibition.   The last goal of this summer came through my creation of a toolkit for others to use when doing the same work. I ended up creating it for students at the Madras College, a secondary school near St Andrews, with the goal of developing materials for high school students to do similar critical work by dissecting the archives and collections of their school and the colonial underpinnings behind them. I divided it up into segments, where I laid out steps and guiding questions for the different steps in the process. I included an explanation of decolonization in the museum context, some guiding ideas for the development of a clear mission statement, ideas for object identification, what to look for when researching, a sample research profile for an object, research resources to get started, advice on getting community and peer feedback, and finally, considerations for audience accessibility. I felt what was hardest here was not outlining the steps, but also including the aspects of research and this kind of work that younger students wouldn’t consider (and that I didn’t even actively think about until making this sort of resource). In making this resource, I really felt like an educator and like I was not just able to do this work myself, but also lead others to be able to do it too. It really felt like the bridge between the university setting of academia and the community who also has a stake in their heritage and how it is talked about. While the Madras School hasn’t gotten the chance to use the resource yet, when they do, they’ll hopefully be using my tool kit. Hopefully, we can see how effective it is soon and can tweak it as necessary so it can act as a resource for schools elsewhere in Scotland.