Senior Fellow 2024: Yanoa Pomalima Carrasco

Written by George Peckham, Coordinator, International Training Programme and Yanoa Pomalima Carrasco, Museums and Heritage Consultant (Peru, ITP 2022)

We are delighted to announce that our Senior Fellow 2024 will be Yanoa Pomalima Carrasco, freelance curator and museum and heritage consultant. Yanoa has worked with various cultural institutions and museums. She specialises in applying interactive resources and creating educational materials and exhibitions.

Yanoa joined us on the International Training Programme (ITP) in 2022. During her time on the ITP Yanoa attended range of subject specialist sessions and tailored sessions chosen to reflect her professional interests, role profile and current projects and programmes. Her partner placement was spent at Glasgow Museums. Throughout her placement, Yanoa collaborated with other fellows and the Open Museum team to design a new travelling exhibition display on the theme of Journeys, which showcased pieces from Africa, Asia, and The Americas. In 2023, Yanoa returned to the ITP to attend the annual Museums Association Conference, which was held in Newcastle.

Yanoa is an archaeologist and museologist who has worked as a curator and museum educator in Peru, the United States, and Spain. She previously worked for the Ministry of Culture in Peru, where she researched the history of the Andes and developed curatorial projects with native communities for the Inca Trail Project. Later, she worked with the General Directorate of Museums, collaborating with public museums to create virtual tours of their permanent and temporary exhibitions. In both projects, she worked with local voices to co-create meaningful narratives that highlight the stories behind their collections. Yanoa has started a consulting firm to provide support for cultural projects, with a focus on accessibility and inclusion within archaeological sites and museums.

Yanoa is concerned about the relationship between the local communities and the visitors in museums in the present time. This has encouraged her to investigate new and creative methods in museum fieldwork. Some of the main topics that she intends to explore during her upcoming stay in the UK include community engagement, collaborative and co-curation projects, and the promotion of well-being in museums.

The ITP Senior Fellow role is part of our ITP further engagement projects which are essential to the core objectives of the ITP. Finding ways to give our fellows the widest possible opportunities for further training and development is fundamental.  Legacy projects inspire a lifelong commitment to our network from ITP partners and fellows, supported by the British Museum.

To date the ITP has welcomed 10 fellows back to the UK as Senior Fellow to further their professional development and strengthened their connections to the UK ITP network. These colleagues have worked on supporting and delivering the programme as part of the core ITP team.

The role of Senior Fellow is taken on by a former ITP fellow to help facilitate the Annual Programme. Having participated on the Annual Programme previously, Yanoa will provide the 2024 cohort with knowledge of the course, of London and our UK partner museums.

In return, the role will offer Yanoa the opportunity to gain further knowledge in the delivery and development of skills-sharing programmes, to reconnect with BM and UK partner colleagues and to make new connections across our global network.

Yanoa will be an invaluable member of the ITP team, helping with the logistics and development of the annual programme, offering ideas for our legacy and sustainability projects, and providing support to the ITP team and fellows during the programme.

Yanoa will also take on the role of ‘guest editor’ of the ITP Newsletter 2024 helping develop the theme and content and join the ITP Advisory Board.

Yanoa has shared her thoughts about taking on the Senior Fellow role…

I am thrilled to return to the British Museum as a Senior Fellow for the upcoming ITP. It is a wonderful feeling to come back to a place where I have had significant professional and personal experiences. Being a Senior Fellow is a meaningful commitment to the program and a great responsibility while becoming the support and compass for the new fellows to navigate during the program.

I am excited to establish new connections with museum professionals in the UK, as well as with the new fellows. Together, we will share experiences, exchange ideas, and celebrate our future achievements. I am honoured to accept this new challenge and I cannot wait to collaborate closely with the ITP team and partner museums to ensure that the new fellows have a fulfilling and enjoyable formative journey.

We are very excited to be working with Yanoa as our Senior Fellow 2024 – our eleventh ITP Fellow to take on this role – and we look forward to keeping you up to date with the project as it develops.