Danni Lin

PhD

Post-disaster conservation; Chinese Australian heritage; diasporic and religious heritage; material biography; community-engaged conservation

Danni Lin
Danni Lin

Danni Lin is a PhD graduate researcher in Cultural Materials Conservation at the University of Melbourne and a recipient of the Melbourne Research Scholarship. Her doctoral research continues the work she began during her Master of Cultural Materials Conservation on the post-fire recovery of Melbourne’s See Yup Temple. She is part of Associate Professor Nicole Tse’s ARC project, The See Yup Temple: Chinese Australian collections, recovery, conservation. Her research brings together material and technical examination, inscriptions, archival sources and community knowledge to investigate the changing meanings and values of fire-affected religious objects. She is particularly interested in the relationships between material care, living heritage, cultural memory and the people connected to objects and places.

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Thesis

The See Yup Temple Collection: Material Biography, Memory and Changing Values after Fire

This research examines the changing material, cultural and social lives of fire-affected plaques and ritual objects at See Yup Temple in Melbourne following the 2024 fire. It asks how conservation can respond to physical damage while also recognising inscriptions, ritual use, community memory, emotional attachment and changing heritage values. Combining object examination, conservation documentation, material and technical analysis, archival research, inscription study and community knowledge, the project traces how selected objects were made, donated, used, damaged, recovered and reinterpreted over time. By situating conservation decisions within the temple’s living religious and diasporic context, the research aims to contribute to a culturally sensitive and community-responsive approach to post-disaster heritage conservation. Although centred on a Chinese Australian temple, the project addresses wider questions relevant to religious collections, diaspora heritage and international collaboration in the care of culturally significant objects after disaster.

Research interests

  • Post-disaster heritage conservation and recovery
  • Chinese Australian, diasporic and religious heritage
  • Material biography, inscriptions and object-based research
  • Community knowledge, memory and emotional attachment
  • Cross-cultural and international conservation collaboration

Supervisors