Chrisyl Wong-Hang-Sun is a Project Curator for the EMKP and is responsible for public engagement and dissemination of EMKP projects, the digital review of assets, providing support and guidance to grantees during fieldwork, and the organisation of events and training for grantees at the British Museum. She also oversees the financial and budgeting records for the programme.
Chrisyl has a background in the anthropology of migration and displacement, law, hope, and the future, and has conducted fieldwork with native Chagossians in Mauritius and the UK, who were forcibly displaced from the Chagos islands between 1968 and 1973. Her research focuses on native and older generation Chagossian perspectives on migration to the UK, through the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which enabled British citizenship for all Chagossian descendants. Her undergraduate thesis was awarded the ‘Best Dissertation Award in Anthropology’, and her academic performance during her MRes in Anthropology earned her a place on the 2023 Dean’s List.
As a Mauritian/Chagossian herself, Chrisyl uses poetry to explore emotional ethnographic experiences in the field between a researcher with a diachronic positionality to the field, and interlocutors within the field. She has forthcoming publications on both her research and her ethnographic poetry, exploring Chagossian migration from Mauritius to the UK. In April 2024, she gave a presentation for the Museum’s Ethnographer’s Group Annual Conference, and was subsequently invited to contribute an article to the Journal of Museum Ethnography, based on Chagossian endangered material knowledge and indigenous advocacy within museums.
Her research interests include the ethnography of the Indian Ocean, specifically the Mascarene and Chagos islands, human and non-human relations, poetic and photographic research methods, and migration and forced displacement.
Prior to joining the EMKP, Chrisyl worked as Market Researcher to improve exhibitions in museums and galleries across the UK.
Chrisyl during fieldwork, learning how to grate coconut using indigenous techniques and tools from the Chagos islands.