Dr. Karen Jacobs is Senior Lecturer at the Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, University of East Anglia. She has worked on various international research projects, focusing on the Kamoro region in West Papua, on Polynesian Visual Arts, the Arts of Fiji, and material heritage of British missions in Africa and the Pacific.

Her research resulted in a range of exhibitions and publications. Exhibition projects include Pacific Encounters: Art and Divinity in Polynesia 1760-1860 (Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, 2006; Paris MuseƩ du quai Branly- Jacques Chirac, 2008), Art and the Body (Fiji Museum, 2014) and Fiji: Art and Life in the Pacific (Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, 2016-17).

Book projects include Collecting Kamoro (Jacobs 2012) and Trophies, Relics and Curios? Missionary Heritage from Africa and the Pacific (Jacobs, Knowles & Wingfield 2015).