Why are we paying for a Bolivian student to "decolonise" Bolivian museums... in Bolivia?

It's working from home in the extreme

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The other day while researching taxpayer-funded grants about “decolonising” things, I noticed a PhD in “Defining decolonisation in Bolivian museums: from rhetoric and practices to conceptualisation”.

The researcher behind this project is Isabel Collazos Gottret, who’s funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and it’s classed as a “studentship”.

A note on studentships (which regularly come up in Woke Waste)

Studentships tend to mean PhDs.

Generally, they pay around £20k per year. Each one is slightly different - contingent on when the student started and the length of their project. PhDs usually last around 3.5 years. Collazos Gottret’s began in November 22 and will end in April 2026, so can you get a rough idea of the sums involved.

Why do we need this study?

Given taxpayers are (apparently) going through a period of austerity - which, according to Paul Krugman in The Guardian yesterday, has “wrecked Britain” - I’m just not sure what Brits get out of decolonising Bolivian museums?

It feels like we are funding “working from home” in the extreme.

Collazos Gottret is Bolivian, according to her X profile:

as well as describing herself as a “Cultural Manager” on X and elsewhere:

And she has been commissioned to study in Bolivia, courtesy of the British taxpayer.

As Collazos Gottret explains on the UKRI research portal:

“Year 2 will comprise of ten months of ethnographic and action-based research in Bolivia. I will analyse the museums' exhibition narratives, texts, public programmes, accession priorities and collection taxonomies. I will interview museum workers to understand their backgrounds, perceptions and subjectivities. The action-based research will consist in participative workshops with workers, drawing on their decolonial practices, values and knowledge in order to conceptualise these practices, and collectively build tools appropriate to their values and goals. This will allow me to further understand the dynamics in place.”

Sounds very useful to the UK!

Looking at her X feed you wouldn’t exactly guess she’s a student of Leicester University:

It looks very lovely - apart from we’re paying for it.

Let’s be honest. Could you imagine the equivalent happening? A British student does a degree in Bolivia, funded by Bolivians, to live in the UK decolonising museums?

So why is the opposite acceptable to Brits? Why do our leaders continue to treat us as mugs?