Isabel Collazos Gottret

I am a Bolivian PhD student in Museum Studies at University of Leicester. I research how State-led and/or theoretical ‘decolonising’ rhetoric has entered the museum, and how it has been interpreted, adapted or ignored by practitioners – by doing institutional ethnography. I have degrees in History, Development Studies and Museum Studies, and have worked in UNESCO as a member of the Delegation of Bolivia. I was director of the Simón I. Patiño Cultural Centre (Bolivia) where I developed, with a multidisciplinary team, cultural projects with a social change perspective.

My research project analyses the heterogenous experiences of colonisation and decolonisation in Bolivia, as they shape museum-making and practice. As a project that disentangles the complexities of decolonial theory, praxis and discourse, my thesis will shed light on overlooked issues, strategies and limitations that are encountered by museum practitioners decolonising their work. For practitioners and organisations who aim to meaningfully engage in decolonial praxis, the process of disentanglement will provide useful questions and frameworks that decentre monolithic museum-making processes while valuing and caring for the lived, empiric and acquired museological expertise necessary to move transformative and creative decolonial praxis forward.

Collazos Gottret, I. (forthcoming) ‘Contrabandista del conocimiento: una doctoranda boliviana en una escuela de verano decolonial francesa’ 

Collazos Gottret, I. (forthcoming) ‘Marias, Kellys, Marios e Isas’. 

Collazos Gottret, I. (forthcoming) ‘Una relación ambigua con el pasado. Estrategias expositivas de cinco museos de Santa Cruz de la Sierra’.

Collazos Gottret, I. (2025), Growing, 'Healing, Knowing, And Sharing: The Community Museum Of Traditional Medicine Of Huancollo, Bolivia Exhibition Review', Museological Review (27), 114-122.

Bunning, K., Collazos Gottret, I., Cuzzola, C. MacLeod, S., Plumb, S., & Sandell, R. (2024) Contested Desires: Constructive Dialogues Background Research (PDF, 1.45MB), Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG) & Contested Desires Consortium

Collazos Gottret, I. (2024), ‘Museums and societal collapse: The museum as lifeboat By Robert R. Janes, Milton: Routledge. 2023. 180 pages. £35.99 (pbk). ISBN: 9781032382241’, in Museum Anthropology.

Co-organiser and co-designer of the ‘Flourishing Edges Unconference’ where academics, PhDs, practice-based researchers and artists met to delve into different ways of knowing and being (Stourbridge 2025). The unconference received funding from Midlands4Cities.   

Facilitated the 'Rethinking cultural management' online workshop funded by the Spanish Cultural Centre in La Paz (July – August, 2024)
Facilitated the 'Rethinking cultural management' workshop funded by the Spanish Agency for Cooperation and Development in Santa Cruz de la Sierra (2023)

'Doing research in Humanities: tools, perspectives and representation' talk given to Undergraduate students of Hispanic language and philology of the Universidad Autónoma Gabriel René Moreno, Santa Cruz de la Sierra (2023).

I have been awarded a studentship from the Midlands4Cities doctoral training partnership to undertake my PhD.

'When decolonisation enters the museum in Bolivia: confronting critical research with Indigenous revival and technologies of representation'. Paper presented for the Global South Network PhD in progress seminar series, online, October 2024.

'The Domestication of Decolonisation. Counteracting from research practice' presented during M4C Research Festival (Birmingham, 2023)

'Employee wellbeing: a leader's compass navigating management change' presented in the INTERCOM Conference entitled 'The Future Museum. Framing the skills and mindsets of the visionary leader' (Doha, 2023)

Master of Arts in Development Studies, with a focus on social development: education, health, work. University of Panthéon-Sorbonne, distinction.